Make: drop targets after recursion - makefile

Make is a beautiful and powerful tool for wide and sundry use. I love it, and this is only a detail.
Suppose I have a recursive make recipe defined as follows:
submake-cmd:
make ${SUBMAKEGOALS} -C foo
# where I have derived ${SUBMAKEGOALS} earlier
And here is the crux: I can either set the make interface up like so...
$: make submake-cmd SUBMAKEGOALS="foo bar"
-- OR --
# preferably
make submake-cmd foo bar biz baz
The only problem is that if I calculate the ${SUBMAKEGOALS}, then I am forced to write the submake-cmd rule like so in order to avoid unpredictable behavior:
submake-cmd:
make ${SUBMAKEGOALS} -C foo
exit 1
Such that make will exit, and I will see make exit with an error.
There must be some way to clear out the make targets or indicate that make has completed successfully when using make recursion...
Does anyone have any ideas?

preferably
make submake-cmd foo bar biz baz
You're probably overthinking something. If you want to pass an unknown number of targets to submake then it could be done like this:
ifneq ($(sub),)
.DEFAULT:
$(MAKE) -C $(sub) $#
endif
And then: make sub=dir1 foo; make sub=dir2 bar biz bazetc. (I assume the root makefile does not contain any of foo/bar/biz/baz of its own; if it's not so, then you have to patch these rules appropriately).

Related

How do I recursively use make with sub receipes?

I have to Make files like follows:
Makefile
foo/
Makefile
Top Make looks like:
make-sample:
cd foo && make all
Bottom Make looks like:
all:
./builder.sh
The sub make works as designed and prints out some stuff to the terminal. When running it from the top make file: make foo it doesn't return the same cli output and it makes me think something is not correct. I was looking at recursion man pages for make https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Recursion.html#Recursion and I was understanding it somewhat. It looks like i am close, though i don't understand the use of $(MAKE) without giving a recipe.
it looks like it wants me to say something like:
make-sample:
cd foo && $(MAKE)
# or
make-sample2:
$(MAKE) -C foo
Can someone better explain to me how to run a sub make with a recipe such that it properly logs the same info to stdout?
On your top directory, foo is a directory and you need to explicitly tell make that your target name foo is not a file, nor a directory by adding this line:
.PHONY: foo
Otherwise, make might do nothing when you do make foo from the top directory.

Makefile lazy expansion of rule prerequisite

I have a couple of rules which are parametrised as follows:
.SECONDEXPANSION:
NAME=default
foo: x-$$(NAME)
bar: NAME=bar
bar: foo
baz: NAME=baz
baz: foo
x-%:
#echo building $#
I would expect the following output when running make bar:
$ make bar
building x-bar
But I see:
$ make bar
building x-default
Is there a way to delay expansion in a rules' prerequisites until after it is being invoked so I can parametrize the rules like this? I would like to avoid using define ... endef etc. because my rules are quite complicated and having another level of $$ in there would really hurt readability.
This was a bug in make. Fixed in make 4.4. It yields the output you expected:
# make bar
building x-bar

make does not require rule for phony prerequisite

.PHONY: foo bar baz
all: foo bar baz foo bar
# #=$#
# ?=$?
# <=$<
# ^=$^
# +=$+
Here is the output of this:
# #=all
# ?=foo bar baz
# <=foo
# ^=foo bar baz
# +=foo bar baz foo bar
If if comment first line as:
#.PHONY: foo bar baz
Then output is:
make: *** No rule to make target `foo', needed by `all'. Stop.
i have two question:
1) Why make does not complain for a rule in first case when "foo bar and baz" are declared PHONY.
2) I started commands with a pound(#). Why these commands are not treated as a comment.
Etan has the right info in his comments. Just to be a little more verbose:
1) Declaring a target PHONY creates it as a target inside make. So thereafter, if you list it as a prerequisite, make knows about it just as if you'd written foo: as a target. It could be argued this is a bug in make; I'm not sure, but that's how it works.
2) The important detail from Etan's answer is that if there's a line in your makefile [1] that starts with a TAB, make will send it to the shell. Make doesn't try to interpret the line, even to see if it's a comment or not (other than expanding variables/functions of course). Whatever you write, is sent to the shell.
[1] "in a target context", which is hard to describe concretely... best bet is to never use TAB unless you're trying to write a recipe line.

Ordering in makefiles

I've two targets foo and bar. Neither depend on the other, but if bar has to be rebuilt, it has to be done before foo. They are what gnu-make calls phony targets, their rules have always to be executed when they are specified.
Currently, we express a main target which depends on both like this:
# user level targets
all: bar
#$(MAKE) foo
#echo all
alt: foo
#echo alt
# internal targets
foo:
#echo foo
bar: qux
#echo bar
qux:
#echo qux
#touch qux
and we have the required behavior: if qux is not up-to-date: make bar outputs qux bar foo all (in that order) and make alt outputs foo alt; if qux is up-to-date, make bar output bar foo all and make alt outputs foo alt.
This is increasingly uncomfortable as foo has to be handled specifically (all targets which depend on both have to be handled that way, foo can't be put in a variable describing dependencies if bar is also there, the submake is itself an issue and the command line has to be maintained to pass additional variables). We now have another target which has to be handled in the same way and I'm looking for other, more convenient, ways to handle the structure.
Note 1 : In practice, I'm currently using only gnu-make but the only known dependency on a gnu-make extension over POSIX is the possibility to include files (which is quite widely available). I'd prefer something which keep the current state (i.e. widely supported constructs), but if it is not possible, the use of a gnu-make only extension is acceptable.
Note 2: gnu-make has a notion of order-only-prerequisites, but it apparently doesn't provide what we need. With
# user level targets
all: bar foo
#echo all
alt: foo
#echo alt
# internal targets
foo: | bar
#echo foo
bar:
#echo bar
make alt also build bar (if a file bar exist, its date doesn't influence the decision of rebuilding foo, which is the documented behavior).
Note 3: The more I think about it, the less I think it is possible to solve this problem with make without using a recursive call. It seems to me that it need two passes on the dependency graph, one to determine what has to be built, one to determine the ordering and I know nothing in make behavior which can't be done with a one pass algorithm.
Hmmm, how about this hack (for a hack it undoubtedly is :-)).
Basically, you could run make -d -n plus your command arguments. The output will contain several lines like Must remake target 'clean'. This information tells you whether this run of make will attempt to build both foo and bar. If this turns out to be the case, just add a rule to cause the serialisation you want.
A sketch:
this := $(lastword ${MAKEFILE_LIST})
ifndef DONTRECURSE
targets-that-will-get-remade := $(patsubst %',%,$(shell ${MAKE} -f ${this} ${MAKECMDGOALS} --debug=b -n DONTRECURSE=nosiree | grep -Po "Must remake target '\K.*'"))
endif
ifeq (bar foo,$(sort $(filter bar foo,${targets-that-will-get-remade})))
foo: bar
endif
.PHONY: foo bar
foo bar:
sleep 3
: $#
So, you run make. DONTRECURSE is not set so the $(shell …) runs. That runs make a second time with the same makefile and goals, but adds the -d (debug) and -n (don't actually run the recipes) flags. DONTRECURSE is set to prevent a third copy of make running.
The expansion of all that is a list of the targets this run of make will attempt to build on this run. (Extracting the target names is pretty tiresome—there is probably a cleaner way.)
If this list of targets includes both foo and bar, simply add a foo: bar dependency. Job done. The sleep 3 lines show this serialisation working when you use -j4 (say).

How to have variables of one included makefile available in another makefile included later?

I have the Makefile below,
include settings.mk
include main.mk
where settings.mk has the following content,
FOO=foo
BAR=bar
and main.mk is as follows:
THIS_MAKEFILE:=$(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST))
.PHONY: all
all:
$(MAKE) -f $(THIS_MAKEFILE) display
.PHONY: display
display:
#echo "FOO=$(FOO)"
#echo "BAR=$(BAR)"
The problem is that make all results in the following output
FOO=
BAR=
instead of
FOO=foo
BAR=bar
How to have the variables FOO and BAR available in main.mk?
When you execute just make -f main.mk (in the all target), the values are not set because you've just reread main.mk without pre-reading settings.mk.
In the Makefile, the variables are set. If you add a rule such as:
check:
#echo "FOO=$(FOO); BAR=$(BAR)"
to the Makefile, and then run make check, you'll see that FOO and BAR are indeed set.
So, the question becomes: why on earth are you doing what you are doing — and why are you expecting just make -f main.mk to know about stuff set in a makefile that the second invocation of make hasn't read? I think this is probably an XY Problem.
You could add include settings.mk to main.mk; that might make sense (but then the main Makefile would only need to contain include main.mk, leaving open the question of why you have both).
They are available in main.mk. They aren't available in the sub-make that you are spawning because you haven't exported them.
Use $(info FOO:$(FOO))/etc. in main.mk and you'll see them print out correctly.

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