Variable export, recursion, and environment

[Sankaranarayanan K V]

Hi,

Consider a recursive make invocation.

Case 1:

  1. The environment does NOT have a variable VAR set.
  2. The top level Makefile does NOT export VAR.
  3. The top level Makefile sets VAR to x.

  Result: The sub-make invocation does NOT inherit a value for VAR.

Case 2:

  Same as Case (1) except that the environment defines VAR=y.

  Result: The sub-make invocation inherits a value for VAR.
  But the value is x (set by the parent Makefile) and not y.

Somehow, this seems a bit strange to me.
What is the rationale behind such a behaviour?

I would expect make to either pass the environment value 
_or_ not to pass any value at all to the sub-make.

Regards
Sankar

-- 
Sankaranarayanan K. V.          | address@hidden
Motorola India Electronics Ltd  | http://www.mot.com/miel