Make Cheatsheet

• To view the actual and full commands executed by make while building its targets, use the commands from this post.

• To a dry run:

$ make -n

This prints all the commands that would be executed, without actually executing them.

• To print all the rules and variable values that result from reading Makefiles:

$ make -p

• To print all the rules and variable values without building anything:

$ make -p -f/dev/null

• To get messages of which directories make is entering and leaving:

$ make -w

This is useful, for example, to know which specific Makefile from a subdirectory is being used for running a specific command.

• To list all the Make targets in your current project:

$ make -qp | awk -F ':' '/^[a-zA-Z0-9][^$#\/\t=]*:([^=]|$)/ {split($1,A,/ /);for(i in A)print A[i]}' | sort -u

References

• Quick Reference in the GNU Make Manual: My first stop to check Make’s directives, built-in functions, automatic variables and special variables.

• Automatic Variables in the GNU Make Manual: About the variables that begin with $.

• Implicit Variables in the GNU Make Manual: About the variables for program names (like CC) and arguments to programs (like CCFLAGS).