The intimate details of 'make'

[Chris Cleeland]

The system here at Tulane consists (like many places) of heterogenous
processors on a network.  Also, the file system is networked under
NFS.  Thus, it is possible that I may be working on one of four different
systems, each with their own ideosyncrasies.

One thing that I would like to do is to have a makefile set up such
that I can type something like "make <hostname>" and the makefile
would automatically "know" what options (e.g., compiler) to use on
different hosts, without duplicating the entire (rather lengthy)
dependency file for each system.

I've played around with using make's internal macros, but that doesn't
seem to get me where I want to go (or I don't know how to coerce it
to do so!)  On top of that, the man page associated with make for our
system is less than readable (unless you already know what you're talking
about), so it has provided endless amounts of cryptic fun.

My requests are these:

(1) Does anybody have any references to books, etc. that may prove
    more helpful?
(2) Does anybody have *examples* of doing something like I'm trying
    to do?
(3) Could someone give me an e-mail tutorial of make? (I could name
    names, but I don't want to put anyone on the spot.)

Many thanks!
-cj
-- 
--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
Chris Cleeland                        | BELL:   (504) 866-8186
INET:   cleeland at rex.cs.tulane.edu    | USnail: 1320 Lowerline, Apt. E
UUCP:   cleeland at rex.UUCP             |         New Orleans, LA  70118
Disclaimer:  "I'm a student -- I can't afford one!"