Re: Seeking Makefile style suggestions

[Paul Jarc]

Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com> wrote:
> Is it idiomatic to do this by putting that in a target like so:
>
>   svnprops:
>         find $(CURDIR) -name '*.py' \
>                 -execdir svn ....
>
> or is there a more "native" way I could approach this?

That looks fine to me.  If you like, you could also make this target a
dependency of the main build target ("all", usually).

> Also, I'd really like to refactor all those identical calls into a
> variable that contains something like "svn propset -q", but I'm not sure
> how to get Make to split such a string into the command and its arguments
> instead of a command named exactly that.

Make never does the splitting; the shell does.  Make also doesn't do
quote removal; the shell does.  So...

>  For example, this snippet:
>
>   foo: TESTVAR = "echo this is a test"
>   foo:
>         $(TESTVAR)
>
> tries to run a command called "echo this is a test":

Use this instead:
foo: TESTVAR = echo this is a test


paul