Unexpected behavior from make after running the shell command

[Randy Kao]

Hi All,

I have a feeling this is going to be a silly question but it's baflling me, and I haven't been able to find something similar on the archives and googling.

I'm running "GNU Make version 3.79.1, by Richard Stallman and Roland McGrath.
Built for i386-redhat-linux-gnu" and the contents of my makefile are basic.

VAR :=

newtest:
        @echo "Determing the OS:"
        VAR := $(shell uname)
        @echo "The end."

I'm just trying to save the output from the shell command uname and stuff it into a make variable (VAR := $(shell uname)).

However when running this, it seems as though make is trying to execute the variable that I assigned the output too.

Determing the OS:
VAR := Linux
make: VAR: Command not found
make: *** [newtest] Error 127

Anyone happen to know offhand what I'm doing wrong here? I know it is something simple but just can't see it.

Thanks in advance,
-Randy