How I could add dir to PATH in Makefile

Question

I want to write a Makefile which would run tests  Test are in a directory    tests  and executable files to be tested are in the directory    bin    When I run the tests  they don t see the exec files  as the directory   bin is not in the  PATH   When I do something like this    EXPORT PATH bin  PATH make test   everything works  However I need to change the  PATH in the Makefile   Simple Makefile content   test all      PATH bin   PATH       echo   PATH      x   It prints the path correctly  however it doesn t find the file x   When I do this manually     export PATH bin  PATH   x   everything is OK then   How could I change the  PATH in the Makefile

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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 echoed 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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

To set the PATH variable  within the Makefile only  use something like   PATH      PATH   my dir  test   echo my new PATH     PATH

[linux] How I could add dir to $PATH in Makefile?

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