7.3 Conditionals that Test Flags

You can write a conditional that tests make command flags such as `-t' by using the variable MAKEFLAGS together with the findstring function (see section Functions for String Substitution and Analysis). This is useful when touch is not enough to make a file appear up to date.

The findstring function determines whether one string appears as a substring of another. If you want to test for the `-t' flag, use `t' as the first string and the value of MAKEFLAGS as the other.

For example, here is how to arrange to use `ranlib -t' to finish marking an archive file up to date:

archive.a: ... ifneq (,$(findstring t,$(MAKEFLAGS))) +touch archive.a +ranlib -t archive.a else ranlib archive.a endif

The `+' prefix marks those command lines as "recursive" so that they will be executed despite use of the `-t' flag. See section Recursive Use of make.