Simple assignment :=
A simple assignment expression is evaluated only once, at the very first occurrence.
For example, if CC :=${GCC} ${FLAGS}
during the first encounter is evaluated to gcc -W
then
each time ${CC}
occurs it will be replaced with gcc -W
.
Recursive assignment =
A Recursive assignment expression is evaluated everytime the variable is encountered
in the code. For example, a statement like CC = ${GCC} {FLAGS}
will be evaluated only when
an action like ${CC} file.c
is executed. However, if the variable GCC
is reassigned i.e
GCC=c++
then the ${CC}
will be converted to c++ -W
after the reassignment.
Conditional assignment ?=
Conditional assignment assigns a value to a variable only if it does not have a value
Appending +=
Assume that CC = gcc
then the appending operator is used like CC += -w
then CC
now has the value gcc -W
For more check out these tutorials