How to detect OS in a make file?

Question

I have a command that works one way in OSX/Unix and another in Debian/Linux. I want to create a make file for my application but need to detect the OS and issue the command accordingly. How would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

You could use uname to do this. In your Makefile, you could write something like:

OS := $(shell uname)
ifeq $(OS) Darwin
# Run MacOS commands 
else
# check for Linux and run other commands
endif