12 Portable Make Programming

Writing portable makefiles is an art. Since a makefile’s commands are executed by the shell, you must consider the shell portability issues already mentioned. However, other issues are specific to make itself.

12.1 `$<` in Ordinary Make Rules		$< in ordinary rules
12.2 Failure in Make Rules		Failing portably in rules
12.3 Special Characters in Make Macro Names		Special Characters in Macro Names
12.4 Backslash-Newline Before Empty Lines		Empty lines after backslash-newline
12.5 Backslash-Newline in Make Comments		Spanning comments across line boundaries
12.6 Long Lines in Makefiles		Line length limitations
12.7 `make macro=value` and Submakes		`make macro=value` and submakes
12.8 The Make Macro MAKEFLAGS		`$(MAKEFLAGS)` portability issues
12.9 The Make Macro `SHELL`		`$(SHELL)` portability issues
12.10 Parallel Make		Parallel `make` quirks
12.11 Comments in Make Rules		Other problems with Make comments
12.12 Newlines in Make Rules		Using literal newlines in rules
12.13 Comments in Make Macros		Other problems with Make comments in macros
12.14 Trailing whitespace in Make Macros		Macro substitution problems
12.15 Command-line Macros and whitespace		Whitespace trimming of values
12.16 The ‘`obj/`’ Subdirectory and Make		Don’t name a subdirectory ‘`obj`’
12.17 Exit Status of `make -k`		Exit status of ‘`make -k`’
12.18 `VPATH` and Make		`VPATH` woes
12.19 Single Suffix Rules and Separated Dependencies		Single suffix rules and separated dependencies
12.20 Timestamp Resolution and Make		Subsecond timestamp resolution

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