Re: Wrong order of preprocessor and compiler flags

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Sunday 2022-03-27 23:22, Karl Berry wrote:

>It seems the basic inconsistency is whether CPPFLAGS is considered a
>"user variable" or not. In earlier eras, it wasn't [...]

In earlier eras of what exactly?

As for make, it never made a distinction between user variables or otherwise,
at least that's the way make comes across. Some software will just
break on `make CFLAGS=-O3` and others will work to compile.

As for automake, AM_CPPFLAGS was introduced at the same time as AM_CFLAGS as
per the git log. So CPPFLAGS always was a user variable.

>[more on CFLAGS<->CPPFLAGS order]

I went to the GNU make git repo to check on CPPFLAGS; it appeared first in
documentation rather than source (which seems like a history import mishap),
but even back then in '94, the documentation was inconsistent, sometimes
providing example descriptions where CPPFLAGS comes after CFLAGS/FFLAGS/etc.,
and sometimes reversed.