12. Portable Make Programming

Writing portable makefiles is an art. Since a makefile's commands are executed by the shell, you must consider the shell portability issues already mentioned. However, other issues are specific to make itself.

12.1 `$<` in Ordinary Make Rules		$< in ordinary rules
12.2 Failure in Make Rules		Failing portably in rules
12.3 Special Characters in Make Macro Names		Special Characters in Macro Names
12.4 Backslash-Newline-Newline in Make Macro Values		Empty last lines in macro definitions
12.5 Backslash-Newline in Make Comments		Spanning comments across line boundaries
12.6 Long Lines in Makefiles		Line length limitations
12.7 `make macro=value` and Submakes		`make macro=value` and submakes
12.8 The Make Macro MAKEFLAGS		`$(MAKEFLAGS)` portability issues
12.9 The Make Macro `SHELL`		`$(SHELL)` portability issues
12.10 Parallel Make		Parallel `make` quirks
12.11 Comments in Make Rules		Other problems with Make comments
12.12 The ‘`obj/`’ Subdirectory and Make		Don't name a subdirectory ‘`obj`’
12.13 Exit Status of `make -k`		Exit status of ‘`make -k`’
12.14 `VPATH` and Make		`VPATH` woes
12.15 Single Suffix Rules and Separated Dependencies		Single suffix rules and separated dependencies
12.16 Timestamp Resolution and Make		Subsecond timestamp resolution