Question

Change the environment variable `PATH’ in Makefile does NOT take effect with make in CLT, and it’s OK with the make util which I compiled from original source.

The simple Makefile

PATH := $(PATH):/opt/bin

export PATH

all:
      @cscope --version

My tests

/tmp $ echo $PATH
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
/tmp $ ls /opt/bin/cscope
/opt/bin/cscope
/tmp $ which make
/usr/bin/make
/tmp $ make
make: cscope: No such file or directory
make: *** [all] Error 1
/tmp $ ./_install/bin/make
cscope: version 15.7a
/tmp $ make --version
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


This program built for i386-apple-darwin11.3.0
/tmp $ ./_install/bin/make --version
GNU Make 3.82
Built for x86_64-apple-darwin12.0.0
Copyright (C) 2010  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Can anyone help?

Answer 1

You are confusing make variables with shell variables. With your setup, the shell command that gets invoked is not influenced by the make variable PATH that you have set.

You should set the PATH variable inside your recipe, like in

all:
    @PATH=$(PATH):/opt/bin; cscope --version

You have to to both on one line because every line in the recipe will be run in another shell, effectively losing the PATH setting that you just did. Or you can divide it over multiple lines by adding a backslash \ at the end of each line:

all:
    @PATH=$(PATH):/opt/bin; \
    cscope --version

---

Update

Sorry, I missed the importance of your makefile working with make 3.82. I tried with both versions and indeed, 3.81 and 3.82 behave differently in this case.

I did get this to work with 3.81 though by invoking make as follows:

make SHELL="/bin/sh -c"

or

make SHELL=/bin/bash