Use of PROFILE in Makefiles

Hello,

I could not build pg8.2.4 on Solaris x86 because the variable PROFILE
was set in my path to desktop profile script.
Pg makfiles (Makfile.global) appends value of PROFILE if set to CFLAGS.

I was wondering if there is any particular reason for having PROFILE
appended to CFLAGS.
If this setting is platform specific then will it help moving that to
platform specific makefiles ??


Thanks
Mayuresh