[vox-tech] Environment variables in make

[Richard Harke]

I am trying to modify a makefile to have a few lines
which are conditional on being on ia64. I found a
variable in my environment HOSTTYPE=ia64
that I thought I could use. In the makefile I have
ifeq ($(HOSTTYPE),ia64) but HOSTTYPE doesn't seem to
be defined unless I define in the makefile. (which defeats
the purpose) If I issue the command as
HOSTTYPE=ia64 make
that works but again it doesn't really do what I want.
According the to docs at www.gnu.org/software/make/manual,
all the environment variables are read in when make starts up
and are used unless they are overridden in the makefile.

Can anybody clarify this for me?

Richard Harke