### 10.2 Legacy configuration ¶

Previous versions of GNU `cflow` (up to and including 1.7) were using a different configuration approach. It is considered deprecated and is going to be removed in future versions. Nevertheless, for backward compatibility, it is still supported in version 1.8. These legacy configuration techniques are discussed in this section.

The `CFLOW_OPTIONS` environment variable specifies default options to be placed in front of any explicit options. For example, if you set `CFLOW_OPTIONS="--format=posix --cpp"` in your `.profile`, `cflow` will behave as if the two options `--format=posix` and `--cpp` had been specified before any explicit options.

There is also another possibility to specify your default options. After processing the `CFLOW_OPTIONS` variable, `cflow` checks the value of the environment variable `CFLOWRC`. This value, if not empty, specifies the name of the configuration file to read. Otherwise, the program attempts to read file `.cflowrc` in the user’s home directory. It is not an error if the configuration file does not exist. However, if it does exist but cannot be processed, `cflow` will issue an explicit error message.

Legacy configuration file has the same format and is processed the same way as `cflow` profiles (see above).