This is a guide to explain various useful variables in Userland component Makefiles. To distinguish these from the Makefile(s) that are part of each component distribution, the latter will be referred to as native Makefiles. The following are the basics that just about every Makefile should have. * COMPONENT_NAME is typically a short name (e.g., vim). * COMPONENT_VERSION is typically numbers separated by dots (e.g. 7.3). * COMPONENT_SRC is where the archive is extracted. A common value for this is "$(COMPONENT_NAME)-$(COMPONENT_VERSION)". * COMPONENT_PROJECT_URL is the general web site for the component. * COMPONENT_ARCHIVE is the base name of the archive to be downloaded. A common value for this is "$(COMPONENT_SRC).tar.gz". * COMPONENT_ARCHIVE_HASH is typically "sha256:" followed by the first output field of `sha256sum $(COMPONENT_ARCHIVE)`. * COMPONENT_ARCHIVE_URL is where the archive can be downloaded from. This is typically constructed from $(COMPONENT_PROJECT_URL) and $(COMPONENT_ARCHIVE). * COMPONENT_BUGDB is the lower-case rendering of the BugDB cat/subcat. * REQUIRED_PACKAGES is a list of packages required to build or run the component and its tests. These two are both initialized in make-rules/shared-macros.mk rather than any component-level Makefile, but are frequently referenced from the latter. * COMPONENT_DIR is the top-level directory of the given component in question. * SOURCE_DIR is set to $(COMPONENT_DIR)/$(COMPONENT_SRC). Additional pre/post configure, build, or install actions can be specified in a component Makefile by setting them in one of the following macros. None of these have default values. These are mostly used for miscellaneous set-up or clean-up tweaks as their names suggest. * COMPONENT_PRE_CONFIGURE_ACTION is used by several components to clone a source directory. * COMPONENT_POST_CONFIGURE_ACTION * COMPONENT_PRE_BUILD_ACTION * COMPONENT_POST_BUILD_ACTION * COMPONENT_PRE_INSTALL_ACTION * COMPONENT_POST_INSTALL_ACTION * COMPONENT_PRE_TEST_ACTION * COMPONENT_POST_TEST_ACTION If component specific make targets need to be used for build or install or test, they can be specified via the following. * COMPONENT_BUILD_TARGETS is not usually set because the default target of most open source software is the equivalent of a 'build' target. This needs to be set when building the software requires a different target than the default. You should not override make macros here, but in COMPONENT_BUILD_ARGS. * COMPONENT_INSTALL_TARGETS has a default value of "install". Very few components need to alter this. * COMPONENT_TEST_TARGETS has a default value of "check". Several components need to set this to "test". * COMPONENT_BUILD_ARGS is probably the mostly useful variable here for solving subtle build issues. When you need to override a MACRO set in the native Makefile of a component, do so by adding something like: COMPONENT_BUILD_ARGS += MKDIR="$(MKDIR)" Quoting is often important because values with white-space can be split up, yielding the wrong results. * COMPONENT_BUILD_ENV is for when you just need to override things in the calling environment, like PATH. * COMPONENT_INSTALL_ARGS is mainly used for altering target directories. * COMPONENT_INSTALL_ENV is mainly used for altering target directories. * COMPONENT_PUBLISH_ENV is so far only used to work around Python issues when used by "pkgdepend generate", though the variable may be extended in the future for general "gmake publish" usage. * COMPONENT_TEST_ARGS is little used. * COMPONENT_TEST_ENV is mainly used for altering PATH and friends. * COMPONENT_POST_UNPACK_ACTION is for making minor alterations to the unpacked source directory before any patching has taken place. It should almost never be used. * COMPONENT_PREP_ACTION is used to make alterations to the unpacked and patched source. It should be used with care. * CONFIGURE_DEFAULT_DIRS should be "yes" or "no". A value of "yes" (the default) will trigger the following being passed to CONFIGURE_OPTIONS as parameters to corresponding options. * CONFIGURE_BINDIR is the value for the --bindir= option. * CONFIGURE_LIBDIR is the value for the --libdir= option. * CONFIGURE_MANDIR is the value for the --mandir= option. * CONFIGURE_SBINDIR is the value for the --sbindir= option. * CONFIGURE_ENV is mainly used for passing CFLAGS and other common Makefile variables to configure. When should this be used as opposed to CONFIGURE_OPTIONS and COMPONENT_BUILD_{ARGS,ENV}? In general, you want to tell configure how to build the software using CONFIGURE_OPTIONS. But sometimes you need to pass values in via the calling environment. On rare occasions, you still need to do things like override MACRO settings in the generated Makefiles with COMPONENT_BUILD_ARGS. * CONFIGURE_LOCALEDIR is a cousin of the other *DIR variables above, but rarely used and hence not triggered by CONFIGURE_DEFAULT_DIRS. * CONFIGURE_OPTIONS is extremely useful, possibly our most used "add-on" variable, for passing various options to configure. These tend to vary per component, but --enable-foo and --disable-foo for various values of foo are quite common. * CONFIGURE_PREFIX is the prefix for the various *DIR variables above. Its default is "/usr"; set it if some other value (e.g., "/usr/gnu") is needed. * CONFIGURE_SCRIPT should be set if the default "$(SOURCE_DIR)/configure" is unsuitable for whatever reason. * studio_OPT has a default value of "-xO4". Occasional bugs in the optimizer have been found which have required altering this to "-xO3". There are also studio_OPT.$(MACH).$(BITS) versions of this available if greater specificity is needed. * TPNO is the Third Party number (i.e., a numeric value): the License Technology from the Product Lifecycle Suite tool. This should be used in the common case when there is just one TPNO for a component. We recommend that this be near the top of any Makefile, just below the various COMPONENT_foo definitions. * TPNO_foo is for the rare case (~3% of components) when a component has more than one TPNO. Each one should have a separate short but descriptive name substituted for "foo". This likewise should be near the top of any Makefile, just below the various COMPONENT_foo definitions, and it must also be before the inclusion of ips.mk . * PKGREPO_REMOVE_BEFORE_PUBLISH allows automatic removal of previously published components from PKG_REPO (including obsolete and renamed versions). When set as PKGREPO_REMOVE_BEFORE_PUBLISH=yes removal occurs immediately prior to pkgsend. default: "no" --- Now switching from explaining the function of specific variables to a more general discussion about how to use them to solve problems. One method that has served time and again is adding a level of indirection. For example, when Python 3 came along, we decided to build it 64-bit only, which meant its various modules also needed to be built 64-bit only. But many of them had BUILD_32_and_64 in their native Makefile. So how to tweak that macro to do one thing for Python 2.x but another for 3.x? JBeck spent an entire day trying various combinations that seemed right, but none of them worked. Then Norm pointed out that changing PYTHON_VERSIONS from "3.4 2.7 2.6" to $(PYTHON3_VERSIONS) and $(PYTHON2_VERSIONS) which in turn were "3.4" and "2.7 2.6" would do the trick. I.e., adding a level of indirection solved the problem, as it allowed $(PYTHON_VERSIONS) to be used to specify 64-bit macros but $(PYTHON2_VERSIONS) to specify 32-bit macros. There are many other places where constructs like this are used.