Re: MAKEFLAGS=-r

[Bruno Haible]

Dmitry Goncharov wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 5:45 AM Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org> wrote:
> > And finally, MAKEFLAGS is not even mentioned in the main index of the GNU 
> > Make
> > documentation [5], and only regarding "recursion" in the Variables index 
> > [6].
> 
> 5.7.3 contains
https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Options_002fRecursion.html
> 
> "The MAKEFLAGS variable can also be useful if you want to have certain
> options, such as ‘-k’ (see Summary of Options), set each time you run
> make. You simply put a value for MAKEFLAGS in your environment. You
> can also set MAKEFLAGS in a makefile, to specify additional flags that
> should also be in effect for that makefile. "

This kind of documentation structure has room for improvement.

If MAKEFLAGS has one purpose, the communication with sub-make invocations,
it's got to be documented in a section "Communicating Options to a Sub-make".

If MAKEFLAGS has two different purposes, semantically that far away, there
should be two documentation sections, "Communicating Options to a Sub-make"
and "Activating make options by default".

Bruno