36 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
+++
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date = "2025-02-13"
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title = "Easy help command for Makefiles"
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slug = "help-makefile"
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tags = ["QOL"]
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categories = ["Tools"]
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[params]
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metadescription = 'Adding a help command to your Makefile'
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metakeywords = 'makefile, help command'
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I love Makefiles, they are my prefered way to manage builds. Not just for C or C++, I also use it for Golang for example. To me, it is the best way to manage build commands in a single place.
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As I love CLI tools in general, and working with them, the `--help` flag is often a great help, but Make does not offer this out of the box, and navigating complex Makefiles can be challenging.
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I can't remember where or when, but a few years ago, I found a snippet somewhere of a Makefile command that adds a coloured text output of all Makefile commands. Using it is as simple as making the following your first Makefile command:
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```Makefile
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.PHONY: help
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help: ## Shows all commands
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@echo 'All Makefile commands:'
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@grep -h -E '^[a-zA-Z_-]+:.*?## .*$$' $(MAKEFILE_LIST) | awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":.*?## "}; {printf "\033[36m%-30s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$2}'
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```
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After adding this, you can simply add comments after your other Makefile commands with two `#` characters, like this:
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```Makefile
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.PHONY: dev
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dev: CFLAGS = $(CFLAGS_DEV) ## Development build for /src and /example
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dev: clean $(LIB) $(EXAMPLE)
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```
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This will now be automatically generate help output when running `make help`, or when you have defined this as your first Make command, with simply `make`
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