Question

I have the following in a makefile

ifneq ($(GIT_INFO),)
$(info $(GIT_INFO))
GIT_INFO:=Changed
$(info $(GIT_INFO))
endif

Where, my desire is that if GIT_INFO was set to something on the command line, its value gets populated with the desired string (specifics unimportant). I added the $(info..) lines to verify that this piece was being executed, and it was, but that the value of GIT_INFO wasn’t getting changed, and it isn’t. Why not? I pass GIT_INFO=true on the command line, and both places print true.

Answer 1

You have to use override:

ifneq ($(GIT_INFO),)
$(info $(GIT_INFO))
override GIT_INFO:=Changed
$(info $(GIT_INFO))
endif