Buildsystems Conventions

This only contains the common bits accross buildsystems, not the ones specific to a particular buildsystem or particular project.

Environment variables

CC: Command/path to target platform C Compiler
CFLAGS: Flags passed to target platform C Compiler.
Should not be expected to contain values such as -std=c99.
LDFLAGS: Linking flags passed to target platform Compiler
YACC: Command/path to yacc(1)
YFLAGS: Flags passed to yacc(1)
LEX: Command/path to lex(1)
LFLAGS: Flags passed to lex(1)
AR: Command/path to ar(1)
ARFLAGS: Flags passed to ar(1).
Default for make(1) specified as -rv by POSIX.1-2008.
FC: Command/path to target platform Fortran Compiler
FFLAGS: Flags passed to target platform Fortran Compiler

PREFIX: Common prefix for installation directories, typically defaulting to /usr/local
BINDIR: Installation directory for executables, typically defaulting to ${PREFIX}/bin
MANDIR: Installation directory for manpages, typically defaulting to ${PREFIX}/share/man
DESTDIR: Sets the destination directory for installation into a different root, for example a temporary installation directory later copied into a distro package or the /
PKG_CONFIG: Command/path to target platform pkg-config(1) implementation.
Present in freedesktop.org pkg-config and pkgconf pkg.m4, as well as supported by CMake and meson.

AS: Command/path to target platform assembler
CPP: Command/path to target platform C preprocessor (ie. ${CC} -E)
LD: Command/path to target platform linker
STRIP: Command/path to target platform executable sections stripper (such as debug symbols)
STRINGS: Command/path to target platform strings extractor.
Note: Rather questionable whether it should treat sections differently, and doing such filtering has been source of parser vulnerabilities.
NM: Command/path to target platform executable symbols extractor
READELF: Command/path to target platform ELF reader
OBJCOPY: Command/path to target platform object copier
OBJDUMP: Command/path to target platform object dumper
RANLIB: Command/path to ranlib(1).
Usually not needed anymore due to modern ar(1) implementations maintaining their index.
CROSS_COMPILE: Command prefix before default values of target platform-specific commands like CC, AR, FC, RANLIB, …
For example it can be set to CROSS_COMPILE=x86_64-pc-linux-musl-
HOSTCC: Command/path to build host C Compiler
HOSTCCFLAGS: Flags passed to build host C Compiler
CXX: Command/path to target platform C++ Compiler
HOSTCXX: Command/path to build host C++ Compiler
HOSTCXXFLAGS: Flags passed to build host C++ Compiler
LDSTATIC: Flag(s) to enable static linking passed to target platform compiler when building executables.
For example LDSTATIC=-static