6.5 Setting Variables

To set a variable from the makefile, write a line starting with the variable name followed by one of the assignment operators ‘=’, ‘:=’, ‘::=’, or ‘:::=’. Whatever follows the operator and any initial whitespace on the line becomes the value. For example,

objects = main.o foo.o bar.o utils.o

defines a variable named objects to contain the value ‘main.o foo.o bar.o utils.o’. Whitespace around the variable name and immediately after the ‘=’ is ignored.

Variables defined with ‘=’ are recursively expanded variables. Variables defined with ‘:=’ or ‘::=’ are simply expanded variables; these definitions can contain variable references which will be expanded before the definition is made. Variables defined with ‘:::=’ are immediately expanded variables. The different assignment operators are described in See The Two Flavors of Variables.

The variable name may contain function and variable references, which are expanded when the line is read to find the actual variable name to use.

There is no limit on the length of the value of a variable except the amount of memory on the computer. You can split the value of a variable into multiple physical lines for readability (see Splitting Long Lines).

Most variable names are considered to have the empty string as a value if you have never set them. Several variables have built-in initial values that are not empty, but you can set them in the usual ways (see Variables Used by Implicit Rules). Several special variables are set automatically to a new value for each rule; these are called the automatic variables (see Automatic Variables).

If you’d like a variable to be set to a value only if it’s not already set, then you can use the shorthand operator ‘?=’ instead of ‘=’. These two settings of the variable ‘FOO’ are identical (see The origin Function):

FOO ?= bar

and

ifeq ($(origin FOO), undefined)
FOO = bar
endif

The shell assignment operator ‘!=’ can be used to execute a shell script and set a variable to its output. This operator first evaluates the right-hand side, then passes that result to the shell for execution. If the result of the execution ends in a newline, that one newline is removed; all other newlines are replaced by spaces. The resulting string is then placed into the named recursively-expanded variable. For example:

hash != printf '\043'
file_list != find . -name '*.c'

If the result of the execution could produce a $, and you don’t intend what follows that to be interpreted as a make variable or function reference, then you must replace every $ with $$ as part of the execution. Alternatively, you can set a simply expanded variable to the result of running a program using the shell function call. See The shell Function. For example:

hash := $(shell printf '\043')
var := $(shell find . -name "*.c")

As with the shell function, the exit status of the just-invoked shell script is stored in the .SHELLSTATUS variable.