[Gllug] GNU make expert question: write variable value to a file

[rich at annexia.org]

This is a tricky GNU make question.

How do I write the value of a makefile variable to a named file?

The variable has been defined with:

define foo
...
...
endef

So it may contain newlines, quotes, etc. and I want those exactly
preserved in the output of course. I want variables references to
be expanded.

I can't export the variable to a shell script, so the obvious
method doesn't work:

export foo

file: Makefile
	write.sh> $@

where write.sh is:

#!/bin/sh
cat <<EOF
$foo
EOF

This does work but isn't acceptable because the variable in question
is very large, and so overflows the environment for this and every
other process that the Makefile runs.

Ideas???

Rich.

-- 
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