How I could add dir to $PATH in Makefile?
Did you try export
directive of Make itself (assuming that you use GNU Make)?
export PATH := bin:$(PATH)
test all:
x
Also, there is a bug in you example:
test all:
PATH=bin:${PATH}
@echo $(PATH)
x
First, the value being echo
ed is an expansion of PATH
variable performed by Make, not the shell. If it prints the expected value then, I guess, you've set PATH
variable somewhere earlier in your Makefile, or in a shell that invoked Make. To prevent such behavior you should escape dollars:
test all:
PATH=bin:$$PATH
@echo $$PATH
x
Second, in any case this won't work because Make executes each line of the recipe in a separate shell. This can be changed by writing the recipe in a single line:
test all:
export PATH=bin:$$PATH; echo $$PATH; x
By design make
parser executes lines in a separate shell invocations, that's why changing variable (e.g. PATH
) in one line, the change may not be applied for the next lines (see this post).
One way to workaround this problem, is to convert multiple commands into a single line (separated by ;
), or use One Shell special target (.ONESHELL
, as of GNU Make 3.82).
Alternatively you can provide PATH
variable at the time when shell is invoked. For example:
PATH := $(PATH):$(PWD)/bin:/my/other/path
SHELL := env PATH=$(PATH) /bin/bash
What I usually do is supply the path to the executable explicitly:
EXE=./bin/
...
test all:
$(EXE)x
I also use this technique to run non-native binaries under an emulator like QEMU if I'm cross compiling:
EXE = qemu-mips ./bin/
If make is using the sh shell, this should work:
test all:
PATH=bin:$PATH x
Path changes appear to be persistent if you set the SHELL variable in your makefile first:
SHELL := /bin/bash
PATH := bin:$(PATH)
test all:
x
I don't know if this is desired behavior or not.