5.3 Command Execution

When it is time to execute commands to update a target, they are executed by invoking a new subshell for each command line. (In practice, make may take shortcuts that do not affect the results.)

Please note: this implies that setting shell variables and invoking shell commands such as cd that set a context local to each process will not affect the following command lines.¹ If you want to use cd to affect the next statement, put both statements in a single command line. Then make will invoke one shell to run the entire line, and the shell will execute the statements in sequence. For example:

     foo : bar/lose
             cd $(@D) && gobble $(@F) > ../$@

Here we use the shell AND operator (&&) so that if the cd command fails, the script will fail without trying to invoke the gobble command in the wrong directory, which could cause problems (in this case it would certainly cause ../foo to be truncated, at least).

• Choosing the Shell: How make chooses the shell used to run commands.