What value does $(shell pwd) give?

Question

Going through a MakeFile I find `PROJECT_ROOT = $(shell pwd)` What value does it give? `$SHELL` gives the shell and `$PWD` gives present working directory But what does $(shell pwd) give?

Accepted Answer

The `$(shell)` function calls out to the shell to execute a command. The command being executed in this case is `pwd`, like if you ran `pwd` at the bash shell prompt.

So, `$(shell pwd)` will return the current working directory. You may not be guaranteed that the `$PWD` variable exists in your make environment.

What value does $(shell pwd) give?

Solution

Problem