So, basically I re-architeched things a bit:
The appliance/Makefile.inc fiels are now appliance/Makefile (again). The
main Makefile will call "make -C appliance preinstall" and "postinstall"
(and in future "clean"). So I got rid of the ugly make variables/include
thing. Some of the main Makefile's variables are exported to the
sub-makes. Appliances don't really need $(APPLIANCE) anymore as the
appliance directory is their CWD.
Added some new targets and smarter targets. I can do more with this, but
it's a big improvment from last time. Still learning a lot of Makefile
magic (been reading other people's Makefiles).
Verified that "make -j3" works (at least on the base appliance) but will
kill your hard drive :D
Introduced "profiles" Which are files with variables you want to override.
The file will be "include"ed by the main Makefile. For example, I have a
file, "local.cfg" that looks like this:
--- 8< -----------------------------
CHROOT = /var/scratch/marduk/vabuild
HEADLESS = YES
PRUNE_CRITICAL = NO
VIRTIO = YES
TIMEZONE = EST5EDT
DISK_SIZE = 60.0G
SWAP_SIZE = 48
PKGDIR = /var/scratch/packages
NBD_DEV = /dev/nbd8
all: qcow
--- 8< ------------------------------
Then, e.g. i can run "make PROFILE=local APPLIANCE=kde". If you don't
specify a PROFILE variable, then it will default to the empty string, which
means the main Makefile will attempt to include .cfg
So, for example i have:
$ ln -s local.cfg .cfg
$ make APPLIANCE=kde
Don't set PROFILE inside your .cfg file (why would you?). Also, if the
[pro]file does not exist, the include fails silently.
I will put this info in the wiki eventually...