multiple makefiles in one directory

I have a makefile in a directory of mine which builds scripts with certain environment variables set. What if I want to create another makefile in the same directory with different environment variables set? How should I name the two make files? Does makefile.1 and makefile.2 work? How do I call them?

You can give sensible names to the files like makefile.win and makefile.nix and use them:

make -f makefile.win
make -f makefile.nix

or have a Makefile that contains:

win:
  make -f makefile.win

nix:
  make -f makefile.nix

and use make win or make nix

You can name makefile whatever you want. I usually name it like somename.mk. To use it later you need to tell make what makefile you want. Use -f option for this:

make -f somename.mk

Actually you can have two set of environment variables in the same make file. for example

COMPILER = gcc
CCFLAGS1 = -g
CCFLAGS2 = -Wall

a: main.c
        ${COMPILER} ${CCFLAGS1} main.c
b: test.c
        ${COMPILER} ${CCFLAGS2} test.c

then you can just say make a or make b. Depending on what you want.

Also it is possible with -f flag to call which makefile you want to call.

You can do something like this rather than using multiple makefiles for the same purpose. You can pass the environment or set a flag to the same makefile. For eg:

ifeq ($(ENV),ENV1)
 ENV_VAR = THIS
else
 ENV_VAR = THAT
endif

default : test

.PHONY : test
test:
        @echo $(ENV_VAR)

Then you can simply run the make command with arguments

make ENV=ENV1

I have two makefiles in the same directory. Many of the recipes have identical names and here are two solutions:

1. Prefix in make

proja_hello:
           @echo "hello A"

projb_hello:
           @echo "hello N"

2. Keep two separate files

1. Project A has makefile. Type make hello.
2. Project B has a separate make file called projb.mk. Type bmake hello.
3. This works since I've added alias bmake ='make -f projb.mk to my .bashrc. Note! This command can be called anywhere but only works where projb.mk exists. Note! You lose autocompletion of make with the alias and typing make -f projb.mk hello is not better than typing make projb_hello.