Where to add a CFLAG, such as -std=gnu99, into an autotools project

Question

I have a simple Autotools C project (not C++).

CFLAGs (by inspection) seem to be -g -O2.

I want all of the generated make files to also have

Answer 1

This topic is covered in the Automake manual, 27.6 Flag Variables Ordering. There an interaction between configure.ac and Makefile.am, and its more than just setting a well known shell variable used in implicit make rules.

The short of it is, you should set it in a new variable called something like mumble_CFLAGS discussed in the Automake manual. mumble is just the name of your program, and it is often foo or bar in other examples. Later, when your makefile is created, the recipe for your program (mumble or foo or bar) will use $(mumble_CFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) to build the target.

Here is an example of how it might look. Instead of using mumble or foo or bar, it uses my_prog as a artifact name.

configure.ac:

# Perform a compile test using -std=gnu99, set has_gnu99
if test "$has_gnu99" -eq "1"; then
  AC_SUBST([MY_GNU99], [-std=gnu99])
fi

Makefile.am:

bin_PROGRAMS = my_prog
my_prog_CFLAGS = $(MY_GNU99) $(MY_ANOTHER_FLAG) $(MY_YET_ANOTHER_FLAG) ...

Later, when the makefile is generated, it will have a recipe similar to the following, where $(MY_PROG_CFLAGS) is applied to all the objects that build my_prog:

my_prog :
    $(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(MY_PROG_CFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

The extra indirections of my_prog_CFLAGS allows you to have multiple flags for different targets. For example, you could have a my_prog_CFLAGS, a my_archive_CFLAGS and a my_sharedobj_CFLAGS.

And its not limited to my_prog_CFLAGS. You could also have my_prog_CPPFLAGS, my_prog_CXXFLAGS and other variables used implicitly in makefiles.

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This is from the Automake manual:

Compile Flag Variables

This section attempts to answer all the above questions. We will mostly discuss CPPFLAGS in our examples, but actually the answer holds for all the compile flags used in Automake: CCASFLAGS, CFLAGS, CPPFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, FCFLAGS, FFLAGS, GCJFLAGS, LDFLAGS, LFLAGS, LIBTOOLFLAGS, OBJCFLAGS, OBJCXXFLAGS, RFLAGS, UPCFLAGS, and YFLAGS.

CPPFLAGS, AM_CPPFLAGS, and mumble_CPPFLAGS are three variables that can be used to pass flags to the C preprocessor (actually these variables are also used for other languages like C++ or preprocessed Fortran). CPPFLAGS is the user variable (see User Variables), AM_CPPFLAGS is the Automake variable, and mumble_CPPFLAGS is the variable specific to the mumble target (we call this a per-target variable, see Program and Library Variables).

Automake always uses two of these variables when compiling C sources files. When compiling an object file for the mumble target, the first variable will be mumble_CPPFLAGS if it is defined, or AM_CPPFLAGS otherwise. The second variable is always CPPFLAGS.

In the following example,

bin_PROGRAMS = foo bar
foo_SOURCES = xyz.c
bar_SOURCES = main.c
foo_CPPFLAGS = -DFOO
AM_CPPFLAGS = -DBAZ

xyz.o will be compiled with ‘$(foo_CPPFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS)’, (because xyz.o is part of the foo target), while main.o will be compiled with ‘$(AM_CPPFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS)’ (because there is no per-target variable for target bar).

The difference between mumble_CPPFLAGS and AM_CPPFLAGS being clear enough, let’s focus on CPPFLAGS. CPPFLAGS is a user variable, i.e., a variable that users are entitled to modify in order to compile the package. This variable, like many others, is documented at the end of the output of ‘configure --help’.

For instance, someone who needs to add /home/my/usr/include to the C compiler’s search path would configure a package with

./configure CPPFLAGS='-I /home/my/usr/include'

and this flag would be propagated to the compile rules of all Makefiles.