OS detecting makefile

Question

I routinely work on several different computers and several different operating systems, which are Mac OS X, Linux, or Solaris. For the project I'm working on, I pull my code from a remote git repository.

I like to be able to work on my projects regardless of which terminal I'm at. So far, I've found ways to get around the OS changes by changing the makefile every time I switch computers. However, this is tedious and causes a bunch of headaches.

How can I modify my makefile so that it detects which OS I'm using and modifies syntax accordingly?

Here is the makefile:

cc = gcc -g
CC = g++ -g
yacc=$(YACC)
lex=$(FLEX)

all: assembler

assembler: y.tab.o lex.yy.o
        $(CC) -o assembler y.tab.o lex.yy.o -ll -l y

assembler.o: assembler.c
        $(cc) -o assembler.o assembler.c

y.tab.o: assem.y
        $(yacc) -d assem.y
        $(CC) -c y.tab.c

lex.yy.o: assem.l
        $(lex) assem.l
        $(cc) -c lex.yy.c

clean:
        rm -f lex.yy.c y.tab.c y.tab.h assembler *.o *.tmp *.debug *.acts

Answer 1

There are many good answers here already, but I wanted to share a more complete example that both:

• doesn't assume uname exists on Windows
• also detects the processor

The CCFLAGS defined here aren't necessarily recommended or ideal; they're just what the project to which I was adding OS/CPU auto-detection happened to be using.

ifeq ($(OS),Windows_NT)
    CCFLAGS += -D WIN32
    ifeq ($(PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432),AMD64)
        CCFLAGS += -D AMD64
    else
        ifeq ($(PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE),AMD64)
            CCFLAGS += -D AMD64
        endif
        ifeq ($(PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE),x86)
            CCFLAGS += -D IA32
        endif
    endif
else
    UNAME_S := $(shell uname -s)
    ifeq ($(UNAME_S),Linux)
        CCFLAGS += -D LINUX
    endif
    ifeq ($(UNAME_S),Darwin)
        CCFLAGS += -D OSX
    endif
    UNAME_P := $(shell uname -p)
    ifeq ($(UNAME_P),x86_64)
        CCFLAGS += -D AMD64
    endif
    ifneq ($(filter %86,$(UNAME_P)),)
        CCFLAGS += -D IA32
    endif
    ifneq ($(filter arm%,$(UNAME_P)),)
        CCFLAGS += -D ARM
    endif
endif