make
is great tool to orchestrate the setup and build process of a project. It expects a Makefile
, where we define targets to execute, like for example install
and run
. Then we can use make install
and make run
to execute those tasks.
While target names like install
are quite common, the problems arise when we have to deal with a lengthy Makefile
, and we are not aware of all the available targets.
Hopefully, with a slight modification of our current Makefile
and the addition of a new target, we can expose this information and access it from the Terminal app. Let's see how!
First, we will have to document each of the existing targets. To do so, we will add a comment starting with ##
right after the target's name.
install: ## Install
@echo "Installing..."
run: ## Run
@echo "Running..."
Then, we will use the grep
and sed
command to get the name of the target and the documentation, like in the following snippet:
.DEFAULT_GOAL := help
.PHONY: help
help:
@grep -E '^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+:.*?## .*$$' $(MAKEFILE_LIST) \
| sed -n 's/^\(.*\): \(.*\)##\(.*\)/\1\3/p' \
| column -t -s ' '
We will also set the .PHONY
and the .DEFAULT_GOAL
variables. The last one will make help
the default target when running make
without a specific target.
Now, if we head back to the Terminal app, and run make
, we will get the list of the documented targets as an output 🚀
install Install
run Run
➡️ This post was originally published on my blog.
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