@define

Use this directive to declare global variable (visible to all goals). The variable will be declared as environment variable (via export).

Example:

@define A hello
@define B "${A} world"
@define C 'hello world'

This directive is valid in any place in Makesurefile. However, we recommend:

• place frequently changed variables (like versions) to the top of Makesurefile
• place infrequently changed variables closer to the goals/libs that use them

Variable defined with @define can be overridden with a variable passed in invocation via -D parameter.

Overall, the precedence for variable resolution is (higher priority top):

• ./makesure -D VAR=1
• @define VAR 2 in Makesurefile
• VAR=3 ./makesure

The precedence priorities are designed like this on purpose, to prevent accidental override of @define VAR='value' definition in file by the environment variable with the same name. However, sometimes this is the desired behavior. In this case you can use:

@define VAR  "${VAR}"                      # using the same name, or
@define VAR1 "${ENV_VAR}"                  # using different name, or
@define VAR2 "${VAR_NAME:-default_value}"  # if need the default value when not set  

This allows using environment variables VAR, ENV_VAR, and VAR_NAME to set the value of VAR, VAR1 and VAR2.

Please note, the parser of makesure is somewhat stricter here than shell's one:

@define HW  ${HELLO}world    # makesure won't accept  
@define HW "${HELLO}world"   # OK