If you need to override system-wide settings, perhaps in order to use a specific MaKL version you can create a .maklrc file containing the appropriate variables and let maklsh use them. Suppose you have MaKL installed at /usr/local/share/makl-1.6.0/ and you want to use a newer MaKL version which you have downloaded and installed in your home directory (–prefix=/home/me/work).

Then do the following:

$ makl -C /home/me/work/share/makl-1.7.0/ env
Pick up a shell [bash]: zsh
Pick a suitable environment file [/home/me/work/share/makl-1.7.0/makl.env]: /home/me/.maklrc

then open ‘/home/me/.maklrc’ in your favourite editor (vim right ?) and set the variables to match your “private” MaKL setting:

> vim /home/me/.maklrc

MAKL_VERSION="1.7.0"
export MAKL_VERSION

MAKL_DIR="/home/me/work/share/makl-1.7.0"
export MAKL_DIR

MAKEFLAGS="-I ${MAKL_DIR}/mk"
export MAKEFLAGS

# Set this to expand the config scripts search
MAKL_CF_SCRIPTS="./myproject-configure"
export MAKL_CF_SCRIPTS