CFLAGS are for C compilers and other Unix traditions

[ramsdell@mitre.org (John D. Ramsdell)]

I recognize the vitality of youth, but please allow me to plug some
Unix traditions.  There is a long tradition on how to write
makefiles.  Many of these traditions are encoded in the default rules
that are part of GNU make.  You can see them with the command:

$ make -p

If you execute this command, you will note that the rule for
assembling .S files is:

COMPILE.S = $(CC) $(ASFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS) $(TARGET_MACH) -c

Note that you don't give the assembler CFLAGS.  It's not a C
compiler.

The default rules use TARGET_MACH in a very well thought out way.
Please use TARGET_MACH in a manor consistent with GNU make's default
rules. 

Another long standing Unix tradition is that applications do not
depend on the path environment variable currently in effect.  Relying
on a path means that a user of an application gets screwy results if
they use a non-standard path.  More importantly, an application that
depends on paths does not allow one to install more than one version
of that application.

The Xen application xm fails respect this Unix tradition.  Multiple
installations of differing versions of xm will get very confused.

John