This confBLDVARIANT Build macro is used to convey to the make program a notion of how the compile should run. The possibilities are:

DEBUG

Sets the confOPTIMIZE Build macro to a value of -g for FreeBSD or to -g -Wall for Linux.

OPTIMIZED

Sets the confOPTIMIZE Build macro to a value of -O for FreeBSD or to -O2 for Linux.

PURIFY

Sets the confOPTIMIZE Build macro to a value of -g for FreeBSD and Linux.

The way you use this confBLDVARIANT Build macro looks like this:

define(`confBLDVARIANT', `DEBUG')
define(`confBLDVARIANT', `OPTIMIZED')
define(`confBLDVARIANT', `PURIFY')

The -v command-line switch (-v) for the Build program uses command-line arguments of debug, optimized, and purify to automatically set this confBLDVARIANT macro.

Note that the arguments used for confBLDVARIANT are all uppercase, while those used for -v are all lowercase.

Variants are available only for FreeBSD and Linux as of V8.12.2 sendmail. If you are on another OS, this macro will silently be ignored. If you attempt to use PURIFY, you will see the following Build-time error:

Sorry, the purify build variant has not been plumbed yet. (Bummer.)

Read the RELEASE_NOTES file supplied with the sendmail source to see if more recent versions support purify and other operating systems.