Idiom: variable names

Now that our build system is one giant Makefile, all our variables share the same namespace. Where previously we might have had a variable that contained a list of the Haskell source files called HS_SRCS, now we have one of these for each directory (and indeed each build, or distdir) in the source tree, so we have to give them all different names.

The idiom that we use for distinguishing variable names is to prepend the directory name and the distdir to the variable. So for example the list of Haskell sources in the directory utils/hsc2hs would be in the variable utils/hsc2hs_dist_HS_SRCS (make doesn't mind slashes in variable names). The pattern is: directorydistdirvariable.

See also Idiom: macros where many applications of this naming idiom are necessary.

Variables affecting compilation

The file rules/distdir-way-opts.mk contains a list of the variables affecting compilation, such as $1_$2_HC_OPTS and $1_$2_MORE_HC_OPTS.