| MAKE(1) | General Commands Manual | MAKE(1) |
make — maintain
program dependencies
make |
[-BeiknpqrSst] [-C
directory] [-D
variable] [-d
flags] [-f
mk] [-I
directory] [-j
max_processes] [-m
directory] [-V
variable]
[NAME=value]
[target ...] |
make is a program designed to simplify the
maintenance of other programs. Its input is a makefile: a
list of specifications (target rules) describing build relationships between
programs and other files. By default, the file
makefile is used; if no such file is found, it tries
Makefile. If neither of these exist,
make can still rely on a set of built-in system
rules.
If the file ‘.depend’ exists, it will also be read after the main makefile (see mkdep(1)).
The handling of ‘.depend’ is a BSD extension.
Standard options are as follows:
-e-f
mk-’,
standard input is used. Multiple makefiles may be specified, and are read
in the order specified.-i-’ before each command
line in the makefile.-k-n-p-q-r-S-k option
during recursive builds.-s@’ before each command line in the
makefile.-tExtended options are as follows:
-B-j
max_processes.-C
directory-D
variable-d
flagsmake are to print debugging information.
flags is one or more of the following:
make will wait between 0 and ${RANDOM_DELAY}
seconds before starting a command. A given random seed can be forced
by setting RANDOM_SEED, but this does not
guarantee reproductibility.-I
directory-m option) will be used after this search
path.-j
max_processesmake
may have running at any one time.-m
directory-m will override the default system include
directory /usr/share/mk.-V
variablemake's idea of the value of
variable. Do not build any targets. Multiple
instances of this option may be specified; the variables will be printed
one per line, with a blank line for each null or undefined variable.There are seven different types of lines in a makefile: dependency lines, shell commands, variable assignments, include statements, conditional directives, for loops, and comments. Of these, include statements, conditional directives and for loops are extensions.
A complete target rule is composed of a dependency line, followed by a list of shell commands.
In general, lines may be continued from one line to the next by
ending them with a backslash (‘\’).
The trailing newline character and initial whitespace on the following line
are compressed into a single space.
Dependency lines consist of one or more targets, an operator, and zero or more prerequisites:
This creates a relationship where the targets “depend” on the prerequisites and are usually built from them. The exact relationship between targets and prerequisites is determined by the operator that separates them.
It is an error to use different dependency operators for the same target.
The operators are as follows:
:make will then execute the list of
shell commands associated with that target.
Additional prerequisites may be specified over additional
dependency lines: make will consider all
prerequisites for determining out-of-date status. The target is removed
if make is interrupted.
!make first examines all prerequisites and
re-creates them as necessary.
It will then always execute the list of shell commands associated with that target (as if the target always was out-of-date).
Like :, additional prerequisites may
be specified over additional dependency lines, and the target is still
removed if make is interrupted.
::make will then execute the list of
shell commands associated with that target. Target rules that specify no
prerequisites are always executed.
The target will not be removed if make
is interrupted.
The : operator is the only standard
operator. The :: operator is a fairly standard
extension, popularized by
imake. The
! operator is a BSD
extension.
As an extension, targets and prerequisites may contain the shell
wildcard expressions ‘?’,
‘*’,
‘[]’ and
‘{}’. The expressions
‘?’,
‘*’ and
‘[]’ may only be used as part of the
final component of the target or prerequisite, and must be used to describe
existing files. The expression ‘{}’
need not necessarily be used to describe existing files. Expansion is in
directory order, not alphabetically as done in the shell.
For maximum portability, target names should only consist of periods, underscores, digits and alphabetic characters.
The use of several targets can be a shorthand for duplicate rules. Specifically,
target1 target2: reqa reqa cmd1 cmd2
may be replaced with
target1: reqa reqa cmd1 cmd2 target2: reqa reqa cmd1 cmd2
in general. But make is aware of parallel
issues, and will not build those targets concurrently, if not
appropriate.
Each target may have associated with it a series of shell
commands, normally used to build the target. While several dependency lines
may name the same target, only one of these dependency lines should be
followed by shell commands, and thus define a complete target rule (unless
the ‘::’ operator is used). Each of
the shell commands in the target rule must be preceded by
a tab.
If a command line begins with a combination of the characters,
‘@’,
‘-’ and/or
‘+’, the command is treated
specially:
@’-’+’-n has
been specified. (This can be useful to debug recursive Makefiles.)Commands are executed using /bin/sh in
"set -e" mode, unless ‘-’ is
specified.
As an optimization, make may execute very
simple commands without going through an extra shell process, as long as
this does not change observable behavior.
make also maintains a list of valid
suffixes through the use of the .SUFFIXES special
target.
These suffixes can be used to write generic transformation rules called inference rules.
If a target has the form ‘.s1.s2’, where .s1 and .s2 are currently valid suffixes, then it defines a transformation from *.s1 to *.s2 (double suffix inference). If a target has the form ‘.s1’, where .s1 is a currently valid suffix, then it defines a transformation from *.s1 to * (single suffix inference).
A complete inference rule is a dependency line with such a target, the normal dependency operator, no prerequisites and a list of shell commands.
When make requires a target for which it
has no complete target rule, it will try to apply a single active inference
rule to create the target.
For instance, with the following Makefile, describing a C program compiled from sources a.c and b.c, with header file a.h:
.SUFFIXES: .c .o
.c.o:
${CC} ${CFLAGS} -c $<
prog: a.o b.o
${CC} ${CFLAGS} -o $@ a.o
a.o b.o: a.h
b.o: b.c
${CC} -DFOO ${CFLAGS} -o $@ $<
Consider b.o: there is a complete target rule re-creating it from b.c, so it will be compiled using ${CC} -DFOO.
Consider a.o: there is no explicit target rule, so
make will consider valid transforms. Fortunately,
there is an inference rule that can create a.o from a.c, so it will be
compiled using ${CC}.
Note that extra prerequisites are still taken into account, so both a.o and b.o depend on a.h for re-creation.
Valid suffixes accumulate over .SUFFIXES
lines. An empty .SUFFIXES can be used to reset the
currently valid list of suffixes, but inference rules already read are still
known by make, and they are marked as inactive.
Redefining the corresponding suffix (or suffixes) will reactivate the
rule.
In case of duplicate inference rules with the same suffix combination, the new rule overrides the old one.
For maximal portability, suffixes should start with a dot.
Variables in make are much like variables
in the shell and, by tradition, consist of all upper-case letters. They are
also called ‘macros’ in various texts. For portability, only
periods, underscores, digits and letters should be used for variable names.
The five operators that can be used to assign values to variables are as
follows:
=:=+=?=!=Any whitespace before the assigned value is removed; if the value is being appended, a single space is inserted between the previous contents of the variable and the appended value.
Several extended assignment operators may be combined together. For instance,
A ?!= cmd
will only run "cmd" and put its output into A if A is not yet defined.
Variables are expanded by surrounding the variable name with
either curly braces (‘{}’) or
parentheses (‘()’) and preceding it
with a dollar sign (‘$’). If the
variable name contains only a single letter, the surrounding braces or
parentheses are not required. This shorter form is not recommended.
Variable substitution occurs at two distinct times, depending on where the variable is being used. Variables in dependency lines are expanded as the line is read. Variables in shell commands are expanded when the shell command is executed.
The four different classes of variables (in order of increasing precedence) are:
make's
environment.The six variables ‘@F’, ‘@D’, ‘<F’, ‘<D’, ‘*F’, and ‘*D’ yield the "filename" and "directory" parts of the corresponding macros.
For maximum compatibility, ‘<’ should only be used for actual inference rules. It is also set for normal target rules when there is an inference rule that matches the current target and prerequisite in scope. That is, in
.SUFFIXES: .c .o
file.o: file.c
cmd1 $<
.c.o:
cmd2
building file.o will execute "cmd1 file.c".
As an extension, make supports the
following local variables:
These variables may be used on the dependency half of dependency lines, when they make sense.
In addition, make sets or knows about the
following internal variables, or environment variables:
$’, i.e.,
‘$$’ expands to a single dollar
sign.make was executed with
(argv[0]).make was
executed.make searches for an alternate directory to place
target files. make tries to
chdir(2) into
MAKEOBJDIR (or obj if
MAKEOBJDIR is not defined), and sets
.OBJDIR accordingly. Should that fail,
.OBJDIR is set to
.CURDIR.make.MAKEFLAGS may contain
anything that may be specified on make's command
line. Its contents are stored in make's
.MAKEFLAGS variable. Anything specified on
make's command line is appended to the
.MAKEFLAGS variable which is then entered into the
environment as MAKEFLAGS for all programs which
make executes.PWDmake
normally sets ‘.CURDIR’ to the
canonical path given by
getcwd(3). However, if the
environment variable PWD is set and gives a path
to the current directory, then make sets
‘.CURDIR’ to the value of
PWD instead. PWD is always
set to the value of ‘.OBJDIR’ for all
programs which make executes.make is currently building.make is running
on, obtained from the MACHINE environment
variable, or through
uname(3) if not
defined.make was compiled
for, obtained from the MACHINE_ARCH environment
variable, or defined at compilation time.make was compiled
for, obtained from the MACHINE_CPU environment
variable, or defined at compilation time. On processors where only one
endianness is possible, the value of this variable is always the same as
MACHINE_ARCH.Variable expansion may be modified to select or modify each word of the variable (where “word” is a whitespace delimited sequence of characters). The general format of a variable expansion is as follows:
{variable[:modifier[:...]]}Each modifier begins with a colon and one of the following special
characters. The colon may be escaped with a backslash
(‘\’).
:E:H:L:U:Mpattern*’,
‘?’, and
‘[]’) may be used. The wildcard
characters may be escaped with a backslash
(‘\’).:Npattern:M, but selects all words
which do not match the rest of the modifier.:Qmake.:QL:R:S/old_string/new_string/[1g]g’ is appended to the last slash of
the pattern, all occurrences in each word are replaced. If a
‘1’ is appended to the last slash of
the pattern, only the first word is affected. If
old_string begins with a caret
(‘^’),
old_string is anchored at the beginning of each
word. If old_string ends with a dollar sign
(‘$’), it is anchored at the end of
each word. Inside new_string, an ampersand
(‘&’) is replaced by
old_string (without any
‘^’ or
‘$’). Any character may be used as a
delimiter for the parts of the modifier string. The anchoring, ampersand
and delimiter characters may be escaped with a backslash
(‘\’).
Variable expansion occurs in the normal fashion inside both
old_string and new_string
with the single exception that a backslash is used to prevent the
expansion of a dollar sign (‘$’),
not a preceding dollar sign as is usual.
:C/pattern/replacement/[1g]:C modifier is just like the
:S modifier except that the old and new strings,
instead of being simple strings, are an extended regular expression (see
re_format(7)) and an
ed(1)-style replacement string.
Normally, the first occurrence of the pattern in each word of the value is
changed. The ‘1’ modifier causes the
substitution to apply to at most one word; the
‘g’ modifier causes the substitution
to apply to as many instances of the search pattern as occur in the word
or words it is found in. Note that
‘1’ and
‘g’ are orthogonal; the former
specifies whether multiple words are potentially affected, the latter
whether multiple substitutions can potentially occur within each affected
word.:TAll modifiers are BSD extensions, except for the standard AT&T System V UNIX style variable substitution.
The interpretation of ‘%’ and ‘$’ in AT&T System V UNIX variable substitutions is not mandated by POSIX, though it is fairly common.
Makefile inclusion, conditional structures and for loops
reminiscent of the C programming language are provided in
make. All such structures are identified by a line
beginning with a single dot (‘.’)
character. Whitespace characters may follow this dot, e.g.,
.include <file>
. include <file>
are identical constructs. Files are included with either
‘.include <file>’ or
‘.include "file"’. Variables
between the angle brackets or double quotes are expanded to form the file
name. If angle brackets are used, the included makefile is expected to be in
the system makefile directory. If double quotes are used, the including
makefile's directory and any directories specified using the
-I option are searched before the system makefile
directory.
Conditional expressions are also preceded by a single dot as the first character of a line. The possible conditionals are as follows:
.undef
variable.poison
variable.poison
!defined (variable).poison
empty (variable).if
[!]expression [operator expression
...].ifdef
[!]variable [operator variable
...].ifndef
[!]variable [operator variable
...].ifmake
[!]target [operator target
...].ifnmake
[!] target [operator target
...].else.elif
[!] expression [operator expression
...].else’ followed by
‘.if’..elifdef
[!]variable [operator variable
...].else’ followed by
‘.ifdef’..elifndef
[!]variable [operator variable
...].else’ followed by
‘.ifndef’..elifmake
[!]target [operator target
...].else’ followed by
‘.ifmake’..elifnmake
[!]target [operator target
...].else’ followed by
‘.ifnmake’..endifThe operator may be any one of the following:
As in C, make will only evaluate a
conditional as far as is necessary to determine its value. Parentheses may
be used to change the order of evaluation. The boolean operator
‘!’ may be used to logically negate an
entire conditional. It is of higher precedence than
‘&&’.
The value of expression may be any of the following:
commandsdefinedmakemake's command line or was
declared the default target (either implicitly or explicitly, see
.MAIN) before the line containing the
conditional.emptyexiststargetexpression may also be an arithmetic or
string comparison. Variable expansion is performed on both sides of the
comparison, after which the integral values are compared. A value is
interpreted as hexadecimal if it is preceded by 0x, otherwise it is decimal;
octal numbers are not supported. The standard C relational operators are all
supported. If after variable expansion, either the left or right hand side
of a ‘==’ or
‘!=’ operator is not an integral
value, then string comparison is performed between the expanded variables.
If no relational operator is given, it is assumed that the expanded variable
is being compared against 0.
When make is evaluating one of these
conditional expressions, and it encounters a word it doesn't recognize,
either the “make” or “defined” expression is
applied to it, depending on the form of the conditional. If the form is
‘.ifdef’ or
‘.ifndef’, the “defined”
expression is applied. Similarly, if the form is
‘.ifmake’ or
‘.ifnmake’, the “make”
expression is applied.
If the conditional evaluates to true the parsing of the makefile
continues as before. If it evaluates to false, the following lines are
skipped. In both cases this continues until a
‘.else’ or
‘.endif’ is found.
For loops are typically used to apply a set of rules to a list of files. The syntax of a for loop is:
.forvariable [variable ...]inexpression <make-rules>.endfor
After the for expression is evaluated, it is
split into words. On each iteration of the loop, one word is assigned to
each variable, in order, and these
variables are substituted in the
make-rules inside the body of the for loop. The
number of words must match the number of iteration variables; that is, if
there are three iteration variables, the number of words must be a multiple
of three.
Loops and conditional expressions may nest arbitrarily, but they may not cross include file boundaries.
make also supports
sinclude and -include for
compatibility with other implementations. Both use the same syntax:
sincludefile-includefile
(note no quotes around file) and will include file, but without any error if it does not exist.
Comments begin with a hash
(‘#’) character, anywhere but in a
shell command line, and continue to the end of the line (but a
(‘#’) character in a shell command
line will be interpreted as a comment by the shell).
Some targets may be tagged with some specific attributes by one of the SPECIAL TARGETS or SPECIAL PREREQUISITES described below.
-n or -t options were
specified. Can be used to mark recursive make's,
but prefer standard
‘+cmd’.make, thus letting normal recursive
-j behavior apply.make starts building an expensive target, it won't
start building anything else until that target has finished building.-’).Phony targets are always out-of-date at the start of a run,
but make still keeps track of when they are
built (that is, when the associated command list finishes running).
make is interrupted in
the middle of building it.make recognizes standard special
targets:
.DEFAULT.DEFAULT target rule, with commands
but no prequisites, and make can't figure out
another way to build a target, it will use that list of commands, setting
< and @ appropriately..IGNOREIf the list of prerequisites is empty, apply that to all
targets, exactly like the -i command-line
option.
.PRECIOUSIf the list of prerequisites is empty, apply that to all targets.
.SILENTIf the list of prerequisites is empty, apply that to all
targets, exactly like the -s command-line
option.
.SUFFIXESand also some other special targets as an extension:
.BEGIN.CHEAP.END.EXPENSIVE.INTERRUPTmake is interrupted by a SIGINT..MADE.MAKE+cmd’..MAINmake is invoked,
this target will be built. This is always set, either explicitly, or
implicitly when make selects the default target,
to give the user a way to refer to the default target on the command
line..MAKEFLAGSmake when the makefile is used. The flags are as
if typed to the shell, though the -f option will
have no effect..NOTPARALLEL-j option is still passed to submakes..NO_PARALLEL.ORDER.PATH.PATH.suffixmake
will first look in that path, before reverting to the default search
path..PHONYIt is an error to use several special targets, or a special target and normal targets, in a single dependency line.
Of the special targets described in the previous section, the ones that tag prerequisites can also be used as prerequisites, in which case the corresponding targets will be tagged accordingly.
This is an extension, even for standard special targets.
make also recognizes some other
prerequisites:
.NOTMAINmake selects the first target it
encounters as the default target to be built if no target was specified.
This prerequisite prevents this target from being selected..OPTIONALmake
can't figure out how to create it, it will ignore this fact and assume the
file isn't needed or already exists..USEmake's version of a macro.
When the target is used as a prerequisite for another target, the other
target acquires the commands, prerequisites, and attributes (except for
.USE) of the prerequisite. If the target already
has commands, the .USE target's commands are
appended to them..WAIT.WAIT appears in a dependency line, the
prerequisites that precede it are made before the prerequisites that
follow it in the line. Loops are not detected and targets that form loops
will be silently ignored.make uses the following environment
variables, if they exist: MACHINE,
MACHINE_ARCH, MACHINE_CPU,
MAKEFLAGS, MAKEOBJDIR,
MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX, and PWD.
make also ignores and unsets
CDPATH.
MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX directoryIf -q was specified, the
make utility exits with one of the following
values:
Otherwise, the make utility exits with a
value of 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurred.
The make utility is mostly compliant with
the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”)
specification, though its presence is optional.
The flags [-BCDdIjmV] are extensions to
that specification.
Older versions of make used
MAKE instead of MAKEFLAGS.
This was removed for POSIX compatibility. The internal variable
MAKE is set to the same value as
.MAKE. Support for this may be removed in the
future.
Most of the more esoteric features of make
should probably be avoided for greater compatibility.
A make command appeared in
Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
This implementation is a distant derivative of
pmake, originally written by Adam de Boor.
If the same target is specified several times in complete target
rules, make silently ignores all commands after the
first non empty set of commands, e.g., in
a: @echo "Executed" a: @echo "Bad luck"
@echo "Bad luck" will be ignored.
.TARGETS is not set to the default target
when make is invoked without a target name and no
MAIN special target exists.
The evaluation of expression in a test is
somewhat simplistic. Variables don't need to be quoted, but strings do:
Tests like ‘.if ${VAR} == string’,
‘.if ${VAR} >= 5’,
‘.if 5 <= 10’, and
‘.if string == ${VAR}’ do work, but
‘.if string = ${VAR}’ doesn't.
For loops are expanded before tests, so a fragment such as:
.for TMACHINE in ${SHARED_ARCHS}
.if "${TMACHINE}" == ${MACHINE}
...
.endif
.endfor
requires the quotes.
When handling pre-4.4BSD archives,
make may erroneously mark archive members as out of
date if the archive name was truncated.
The handling of ‘;’ and other special characters in tests may be utterly bogus. For instance, in
A=abcd;c.c
.if ${A:R} == "abcd;c"
the test will never match, even though the value is correct.
In a .for loop, only the variable value is used; assignments will be evaluated later, e.g., in
.for I in a b c d
I:=${I:S/a/z/}
A+=$I
.endfor
‘A’ will evaluate to a b c d after the loop, not z b c d.
ORDER is currently only used in parallel
mode, so keep prerequisites ordered for sequential mode!
Distinct target names are treated separately, even though they
might correspond to the same file in the file system. This can cause
excessive rebuilds of some targets, and bogus races in parallel mode. This
can also prevent make from finding a rule to solve a
dependency if the target name is not exactly the same as the dependency.
In parallel mode, -j
n only limits the number of direct children of
make. During recursive invocations, each level may
multiply the total number of processes by n. However,
make includes some heuristics to try to prevent
catastrophic behavior: if a command is marked as expensive, or preceded by
‘+’, or seems to invoke a program that looks sufficiently like
‘make’, make will assume recursive
invocation, and not start any new process until said command has finished
running. Thus the number of processes run directly or indirectly by
make will increase linearly with each level of
recursion instead of exponentially.
The MAKEFILE variable cannot be used reliably. It is a compatibility feature and may get set to the last makefile specified, as it is set by System V make.
| March 13, 2015 | OpenBSD-5.8 |