Re: ifeq problem

[Paul Smith]

Hi Tom; please keep these discussions on the list, thanks!

On Sun, 2011-12-18 at 12:40 -0800, Tom Rosmond wrote:
> I have been writing makefile for a long time, and although I am
> certainly not an expert, I thought I knew what I was doing.  However, I
> haven't used the conditional concept very much, so I have more to learn.

The thing to keep clearly in mind is which statements are makefile
statements (variable assignments, rule declarations, and GNU make
preprocessor statements like export, ifeq/ifneq/ifdef, define, etc.
etc.) and which are shell statements.

All makefile statements CANNOT be prefixed with a TAB [*], and all shell
statements MUST be prefixed by a TAB.

> If I remove the tabs, I get the familiar 'missing separator' message,
> which usually means tabs are missing from the rule.  This seems like a
> catch22.  I'd appreciate any suggestions on making this work.

> > > all:
> > >         ifeq ($(HOST),cedar)
> > >         @echo $(HOST)
> > >         endif

Please provide the specific example which shows the "missing separator"
message when you run it.

If you remove the TABs from the makefile statements then you will not
see that message, so you are doing something else here; without seeing
what you did we can't comment on what might be wrong.

Cheers!


[*] It's not technically true that makefile statements cannot be
    prefixed by a TAB; GNU make actually only treats TAB-indented
    lines as shell lines if they appear in a "rule context"; but it's
    much simpler to use the general rule and not rely on the special
    cases.

-- 
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