On Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026 at 9:25 AM, David Deutsch <[email protected]> wrote:
> To translate what your command is "saying" to make:
>
> make -f myfile.mk trlfn
>
> equates to "read myfile.mk and then execute the recipe to produce the
> target trlfn".
>
> But trlfn is not a target because it has no recipe.
>
> > Would there be no prerequisites for such cases?
>
> Prerequisites are targets that need to be resolved before building the
> desired targets. They are not dynamic bits of code like in your example.
>
> > If I want to build my program with gcc, I might need to set compiler
> options by specifying what I want to the makefile. How would it be a
> wrong idea?
>
> That's an entirely separate topic. You typically set compiler flags with
> an environment variable. NOT with a target (.PHONY or otherwise)
>
> I also slightly misread your makefile because it's so off-syntax:
>
> trlfn: hopc += --transliterate-file-names
>
> This makes even less sense than I thought - if hopc is your executable,
> you cannot "add to it" with +=, which is an extension to an existing
> variable (although it might work slightly by accidend by just assuming
> that "hopc" is a string that you then append to)
>
> The target shape that you want could be something like
>
> # myfile.mk
>
> hopc-result.trlfn:
> hopc --transliterate-file-names
>
> hopc-result.ndf:
> hopc --node-files
>
> hopc-result.trlfn.ndf:
> hopc --transliterate-file-names --node-files
>
> and then call it via
>
> make -f myfile.mk hopc-result.trlfn
>
> but that's overly contrived.
>
>
> Anyhow - maybe what you're actually looking for here IS an environment
> variable?
hopc accumulates options for makeinfo.
Using multiple options, I would have something like
--html --split=node --transliterate-file-names --node-files
Then I would need the call
$(hmldir)/antares.html: $(srcs) | $$(@D)
makeinfo $(opts) --html $(hopc) -o $@ $<
What would you suggest? Have looked at how emacs generates
its documentation and it uses a makefile that calls makeinfo.
> > I do not think I am using wrong tool for the job.
>
> You're using make like a bash script. That's not inherently wrong, but
> what Make really wants to do is resolve dependency graphs to build
> targets via their recipes.
>
> -David
>
