How can I get a Makefile target to be called multiple times? - makefile

In the simple example below, I want to do a make dist and have the distclean target executed before distdebug and distrelease.
.PHONY: distclean
dist: distdebug distrelease
#echo in dist
distdebug: distclean
#echo in distdebug
distrelease:
#echo in distrelease
distclean:
#echo in distclean
Unfortunately, despite using .PHONY, distclean is only called once:
vagrant#precise32:/tmp$ make dist
in distclean
in distdebug
in distrelease
in dist
I'm guessing that Make knows that its already run distclean once, so it's not running it again. How can I make it run distclean multiple times?

You can't using normal rules. Make will only ever build any given target exactly one time. You can do it using recursive make invocations:
distdebug:
$(MAKE) distclean
#echo in distdebug
distrelease:
$(MAKE) distclean
#echo in distrelease
In general it's a good idea to plan your build differently, though, and have targets for different types of builds put into different subdirectories. That way you don't HAVE to clean in between.

I was looking for something similar, i.e. performing the same pattern (%) target more than once. And I don't like recursive make invocations. Anyway, I ended up in this solution:
run-%: build-%
#echo "run-$(basename $*)"
build-%:
#echo "build-$*"
build-%.2: build-%; #true
build-%.3: build-%; #true
run: run-foo run-foo.2 run-foo.3 run-bar
#true
alternatively:
run: run-foo run-foo.2 run-bar run-foo.3
#true
build-%:
#echo "build-$*"
.SECONDEXPANSION:
run-%: build-$$(basename $$*)
#echo "run-$(basename $*)"
This makefile can run-anything up to three times by adding the extensions .2 and .3 to anything, but it will only build anything once. I hope you get the idea.
> make run
build-foo
run-foo
run-foo
run-foo
build-bar
run-bar

You don't need recursive make calls or enumerated rules. You can just using pattern matching to generate a different distclean alias for your debug and release steps:
.PHONY: dist%
dist: distdebug distrelease
#echo in dist
distclean-%: # matches to distclean-debug, distclean-release etc
#echo in distclean
distdebug distrelease: dist% : distclean-% dist-% # clean first, then run
dist-debug:
#echo in distdebug
dist-release:
#echo in distrelease
So you can make and get:
in distclean
in distdebug
in distclean
in distrelease
in dist

Related

Is there a way to run a job from another job in GNU Make? [duplicate]

I have a makefile structured something like this:
all :
compile executable
clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
I realized that I was consistently running "make clean" followed by "clear" in my terminal before running "make all". I like to have a clean terminal before I try and sift through nasty C++ compilation errors. So I tried to add a 3rd target:
fresh :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear
make all
This works, however this runs a second instance of make (I believe). Is there a right way to get the same functionality without running a 2nd instance of make?
Actually you are right: it runs another instance of make.
A possible solution would be:
.PHONY : clearscr fresh clean all
all :
compile executable
clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
fresh : clean clearscr all
clearscr:
clear
By calling make fresh you get first the clean target, then the clearscreen which runs clear and finally all which does the job.
EDIT Aug 4
What happens in the case of parallel builds with make’s -j option?
There's a way of fixing the order. From the make manual, section 4.2:
Occasionally, however, you have a situation where you want to impose a specific ordering on the rules to be invoked without forcing the target to be updated if one of those rules is executed. In that case, you want to define order-only prerequisites. Order-only prerequisites can be specified by placing a pipe symbol (|) in the prerequisites list: any prerequisites to the left of the pipe symbol are normal; any prerequisites to the right are order-only: targets : normal-prerequisites | order-only-prerequisites
The normal prerequisites section may of course be empty. Also, you may still declare multiple lines of prerequisites for the same target: they are appended appropriately. Note that if you declare the same file to be both a normal and an order-only prerequisite, the normal prerequisite takes precedence (since they are a strict superset of the behavior of an order-only prerequisite).
Hence the makefile becomes
.PHONY : clearscr fresh clean all
all :
compile executable
clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
fresh : | clean clearscr all
clearscr:
clear
EDIT Dec 5
It is not a big deal to run more than one makefile instance since each command inside the task will be a sub-shell anyways. But you can have reusable methods using the call function.
log_success = (echo "\x1B[32m>> $1\x1B[39m")
log_error = (>&2 echo "\x1B[31m>> $1\x1B[39m" && exit 1)
install:
#[ "$(AWS_PROFILE)" ] || $(call log_error, "AWS_PROFILE not set!")
command1 # this line will be a subshell
command2 # this line will be another subshell
#command3 # Use `#` to hide the command line
$(call log_error, "It works, yey!")
uninstall:
#[ "$(AWS_PROFILE)" ] || $(call log_error, "AWS_PROFILE not set!")
....
$(call log_error, "Nuked!")
You already have a sequential solution which could be rewritten as:
fresh:
$(MAKE) clean
clear
$(MAKE) all
This is correct and a very safe approach.
Sequential target execution is possible in GNU make with a proper dependency graph:
fresh: _all
_all: _clear
Recipe for all
_clear: _clean
Recipe for clear
_clean:
Recipe for clean
The above rules define the following dependency graph: fresh <- _all <- _clear <- _clean which guarantees the following recipe execution order: Recipe for clean, Recipe for clear, Recipe for all.
Recipes can be shared with multiple targets using:
target1 target2 target…:
recipe1
Merging your script with the above concepts results in:
all _all :
compile executable
clean _clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear _clear :
clear
fresh: _all
_all: _clear
_clear: _clean
With syntactic sugar using chains.mk from https://github.com/pkoper/mk/ you can write:
all all#fresh :
compile executable
clean clean#fresh :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear clear#fresh :
clear
#fresh = clean clear all
include chains.mk
fresh: #fresh
Or better:
all: compile
#fresh = clean clear compile
include chains.mk
fresh: #fresh
compile compile#fresh:
compile executable
clear clear#fresh:
clear
clean clean#fresh:
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
If you removed the make all line from your "fresh" target:
fresh :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear
You could simply run the command make fresh all, which will execute as make fresh; make all.
Some might consider this as a second instance of make, but it's certainly not a sub-instance of make (a make inside of a make), which is what your attempt seemed to result in.

Impose an order for the prerequisites of a target

I have a makefile snippet:
all: $(objects)
fresh: clean all
clean: ;rm $(objects)
Here, I want to ensure that when I do make fresh - clean should precede all.
But how can I make sure this, given that when I do make all, clean should not be made?
I can imagine that one way could be like this
fresh: clean
make all
Is it the right (or the only) way to solve this issue?
If you use GNU make:
all:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
clean:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
fresh:: clean
fresh:: all
.PHONY: clean fresh all
Please note the double colon after targets fresh! See the documentation:
The double-colon rules for a target are executed in the order they
appear in the makefile.
If you run make -j2 fresh it shows it works as expect:
clean
end clean
all
end all
But with fresh:: clean all doesn't work properly parallel (maybe unexpected).
With BSD make:
all:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
clean:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
fresh: clean all
#echo $#
.ORDER: clean all
.PHONY: clean all fresh
Note the line begin with .ORDER. It works well in parallelization too (see man make). Without parallelization the order of dependencies in line fresh: counts.
As you already suggest in your question, calling make recursively on the same makefile for the target all in a recipe whose prerequisite is clean:
# At the very beginning of the makefile
CURRENT_MAKEFILE := $(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST))
# ...
.PHONY: fresh
fresh: clean
$(MAKE) -f $(CURRENT_MAKEFILE) all
This imposes an order, since the target fresh depends on the prerequisite clean, clean's recipe will be executed before fresh's recipe, which in turn will execute all's recipe.
Note that I'm using here $(MAKE) instead of make for the recursion.

makefile parallel clean+compile issue

I have a simple makefile with 3 build rules:
clean (that cleans the .o)
debug (compiles my code with debgging stuff)
release (compiles my code with optimization stuff)
sometimes I want to switch between debug mode and release so I would issue this
make clean debug -j8
or
make clean release -j8
that has a drawback because while it's doing the clean stuff, the -j8 allows make to jump some command since the .o are still there Then those .o are removed by the clean rule and the compiler complains because it can't find those .o
I could do something like
make clean; make debug -j8
but since I use an odd makefile in another dir, the command becomes
make -C ../src -f nMakefile clean ; make -C ../src -f nMakefile -j8 release
that is more annoying. I was wondering if there was an hiddedn-guru-mode-rule that allows me to do it in one line
Hope it's clear enough...
I needed to solve this very same problem, and the solution I came up was to parse the MAKECMDGOALS for clean, and dispatch a shell command to do the actual cleaning work; RATHER than clean the build as a target. This way, any MAKECMDGOALS that include "clean" will clean the build as part of that build, first, sequentially, rather than clean running asynchronously as its own target.
-include $(deps)
bin/%.o : %.cpp
#mkdir -p $#D
g++ $(flags) $(includes) -MMD -c $< -o $#
.PHONY : clean
clean:
#echo rm -rf bin/
ifneq ($(filter clean,$(MAKECMDGOALS)),)
$(shell rm -rf bin/)
endif
As I stated above, the normal practice is to have different sub directories for the object files. As you are running in parallel I would think you need to enforce serial execution so that clean is completed before release. One way of doing it could be:
clean_release: clean
+#$(MAKE) -s --no-print-directory release
or if you prefer
clean_release:
+#$(MAKE) -s --no-print-directory clean && $(MAKE) -s --no-print-directory release

Run make in each subdirectory

I have a directory (root_dir), that contains a number of sub-directories (subdir1, subdir2, ...).
I want to run the make in each directory in root_dir, using a Makefile placed in it.
(Obviously supposed that each of subdir... has inside its own Makefile).
So there are essentially two questions:
How to get a list of directories in Makefile (automatically)?
How to run make for each of the directories inside a make file?
As I know in order to run make in a specific directory I need to do the following:
$(MAKE) -C subdir
There are various problems with doing the sub-make inside a for loop in a single recipe. The best way to do multiple subdirectories is like this:
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
all: $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
$(MAKE) -C $#
.PHONY: all $(SUBDIRS)
(Just to point out this is GNU make specific; you didn't mention any restrictions on the version of make you're using).
ETA Here's a version which supports multiple top-level targets.
TOPTARGETS := all clean
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
$(TOPTARGETS): $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)
.PHONY: $(TOPTARGETS) $(SUBDIRS)
Try this :
SUBDIRS = foo bar baz
subdirs:
for dir in $(SUBDIRS); do \
$(MAKE) -C $$dir; \
done
This may help you link
Edit : you can also do :
The simplest way is to do:
CODE_DIR = code
.PHONY: project_code
project_code:
$(MAKE) -C $(CODE_DIR)
The .PHONY rule means that project_code is not a file that needs to be
built, and the -C flag indicates a change in directory (equivalent to
running cd code before calling make). You can use the same approach
for calling other targets in the code Makefile.
For example:
clean:
$(MAKE) -C $(CODE_DIR) clean
Source
This is another approach to MadScientist's answer. .PHONY is a GNU-specific feature that can be used to force make into recursing into each subdirectory. However, some non-GNU versions of make do not support .PHONY, so an alternative is a force target.
4.7 Rules without Recipes or Prerequisites
If a rule has no prerequisites or recipe, and the target of the rule
is a nonexistent file, then make imagines this target to have been
updated whenever its rule is run. This implies that all targets
depending on this one will always have their recipe run.
An example will illustrate this:
clean: FORCE
rm $(objects)
FORCE:
Here the target ‘FORCE’ satisfies the special conditions, so the
target clean that depends on it is forced to run its recipe. There is
nothing special about the name ‘FORCE’, but that is one name commonly
used this way.
As you can see, using ‘FORCE’ this way has the same results as using
‘.PHONY: clean’.
Using ‘.PHONY’ is more explicit and more efficient. However, other
versions of make do not support ‘.PHONY’; thus ‘FORCE’ appears in many
makefiles. See Phony Targets.
The following is a minimal example that recurses make into each subdirectory, each of which presumably contains a Makefile. If you simply run make, only the first subdirectory, which is non-deterministic, is processed. You may also run make subdir1 subdir2 ....
# Register all subdirectories in the project's root directory.
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
# Recurse `make` into each subdirectory.
$(SUBDIRS): FORCE
$(MAKE) -C $#
# A target without prerequisites and a recipe, and there is no file named `FORCE`.
# `make` will always run this and any other target that depends on it.
FORCE:
Here is another example with top-level phony targets: all and clean. Note that the all and clean targets, passed from command-line via $(MAKECMDGOALS), are handled by each subdirectory's all and clean targets respectively.
# Register all subdirectories in the project's root directory.
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
# Top-level phony targets.
all clean: $(SUBDIRS) FORCE
# Similar to:
# .PHONY: all clean
# all clean: $(SUBDIRS)
# GNU's .PHONY target is more efficient in that it explicitly declares non-files.
# Recurse `make` into each subdirectory
# Pass along targets specified at command-line (if any).
$(SUBDIRS): FORCE
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)
# Force targets.
FORCE:
You can also define a function in the Makefile (also you of course need an additional makefile in each subdirectory). This is shell-dependent, but can be useful:
define FOREACH
for DIR in packages/*; do \
$(MAKE) -C $$DIR $(1); \
done
endef
.PHONY: build
build:
$(call FOREACH,build)
.PHONY: clean
clean:
$(call FOREACH,clean)
.PHONY: test
test:
$(call FOREACH,test)
Only a small icing on the cake after MadScientist's answer in order to make all the individual targets in the sub-directories available from the top level (you will need to have the SUBDIRS variable defined in order to use the following snippet – you can use MadScientist's answer for that):
# Make all the individual targets in the sub-directories available from the top
# level; as in, for instance, `make foo/my_program` or `make bar/clean`
$(foreach __dir__,$(SUBDIRS),$(__dir__)/%):
#$(MAKE) -C '$(#D)' '$(#F)'
With the code above you can run, for instance,
make foo/my_program
or
make bar/clean
Furthermore, by pasting the code above you can even use an individual target from a sub-directory as a prerequisite for a target in the top level. For example:
my_target: my_subdirectory/my_prerequisite
'my_subdirectory/my_prerequisite' > 'my_target'
…With the example above, launching make my_target from the top level will first build the my_subdirectory/my_prerequisite program, then the latter will be run for building the my_target file.
Since I was not aware of the MAKECMDGOALS variable and overlooked that MadScientist has its own implementation of multiple top-level targets, I wrote an alternative implementation. Maybe someone find it useful.
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
define submake
for d in $(SUBDIRS); \
do \
$(MAKE) $(1) --directory=$$d; \
done
endef
all:
$(call submake,$#)
install:
$(call submake,$#)
.PHONY: all install $(SUBDIRS)
There is a library called prorab for GNU make which supports inclusion of standalone makefiles in subdirectories.
Some info on github: https://github.com/cppfw/prorab/blob/master/wiki/HomePage.adoc
Basically, with prorab invoking all makefiles in subdirectories looks like this:
include prorab.mk
$(eval $(prorab-build-subdirs))
In reference to https://stackoverflow.com/posts/17845120/revisions
This is what I learned from that post.
Top Level Makefile
# set the default goal.
# I want the default to really just dump contents of dirs
# as a stub. For instance, I don't want it to
# push code or
.DEFAULT_GOAL := deploy
TOPTARGETS := all clean
SUBDIRS := docs src
$(TOPTARGETS): $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
echo "make arg is" $(MAKECMDGOALS)
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)
SUBCLEAN = $(addsuffix .clean,$(SUBDIRS))
clean: $(SUBCLEAN)
$(SUBCLEAN): %.clean:
$(MAKE) -C $* clean
deploy:
echo do deploy stub
The src/ and docs/ common to this Makefile directory, all have a corresponding Makefile.
Here is an example of the docs setup:
# set the default goal.
.DEFAULT_GOAL := list_docs
list_docs:
ls -l
clean:
echo "docs: make clean"
-rm "*.backup"
I did this a little different than any of the answers because I didn't want to have to define each possible make target
SUBDIRS := $(patsubst %/,%,$(wildcard */))
.PHONY: all $(MAKECMDGOALS) $(SUBDIRS)
$(MAKECMDGOALS) all: $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)

makefile execute another target

I have a makefile structured something like this:
all :
compile executable
clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
I realized that I was consistently running "make clean" followed by "clear" in my terminal before running "make all". I like to have a clean terminal before I try and sift through nasty C++ compilation errors. So I tried to add a 3rd target:
fresh :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear
make all
This works, however this runs a second instance of make (I believe). Is there a right way to get the same functionality without running a 2nd instance of make?
Actually you are right: it runs another instance of make.
A possible solution would be:
.PHONY : clearscr fresh clean all
all :
compile executable
clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
fresh : clean clearscr all
clearscr:
clear
By calling make fresh you get first the clean target, then the clearscreen which runs clear and finally all which does the job.
EDIT Aug 4
What happens in the case of parallel builds with make’s -j option?
There's a way of fixing the order. From the make manual, section 4.2:
Occasionally, however, you have a situation where you want to impose a specific ordering on the rules to be invoked without forcing the target to be updated if one of those rules is executed. In that case, you want to define order-only prerequisites. Order-only prerequisites can be specified by placing a pipe symbol (|) in the prerequisites list: any prerequisites to the left of the pipe symbol are normal; any prerequisites to the right are order-only: targets : normal-prerequisites | order-only-prerequisites
The normal prerequisites section may of course be empty. Also, you may still declare multiple lines of prerequisites for the same target: they are appended appropriately. Note that if you declare the same file to be both a normal and an order-only prerequisite, the normal prerequisite takes precedence (since they are a strict superset of the behavior of an order-only prerequisite).
Hence the makefile becomes
.PHONY : clearscr fresh clean all
all :
compile executable
clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
fresh : | clean clearscr all
clearscr:
clear
EDIT Dec 5
It is not a big deal to run more than one makefile instance since each command inside the task will be a sub-shell anyways. But you can have reusable methods using the call function.
log_success = (echo "\x1B[32m>> $1\x1B[39m")
log_error = (>&2 echo "\x1B[31m>> $1\x1B[39m" && exit 1)
install:
#[ "$(AWS_PROFILE)" ] || $(call log_error, "AWS_PROFILE not set!")
command1 # this line will be a subshell
command2 # this line will be another subshell
#command3 # Use `#` to hide the command line
$(call log_error, "It works, yey!")
uninstall:
#[ "$(AWS_PROFILE)" ] || $(call log_error, "AWS_PROFILE not set!")
....
$(call log_error, "Nuked!")
You already have a sequential solution which could be rewritten as:
fresh:
$(MAKE) clean
clear
$(MAKE) all
This is correct and a very safe approach.
Sequential target execution is possible in GNU make with a proper dependency graph:
fresh: _all
_all: _clear
Recipe for all
_clear: _clean
Recipe for clear
_clean:
Recipe for clean
The above rules define the following dependency graph: fresh <- _all <- _clear <- _clean which guarantees the following recipe execution order: Recipe for clean, Recipe for clear, Recipe for all.
Recipes can be shared with multiple targets using:
target1 target2 target…:
recipe1
Merging your script with the above concepts results in:
all _all :
compile executable
clean _clean :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear _clear :
clear
fresh: _all
_all: _clear
_clear: _clean
With syntactic sugar using chains.mk from https://github.com/pkoper/mk/ you can write:
all all#fresh :
compile executable
clean clean#fresh :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear clear#fresh :
clear
#fresh = clean clear all
include chains.mk
fresh: #fresh
Or better:
all: compile
#fresh = clean clear compile
include chains.mk
fresh: #fresh
compile compile#fresh:
compile executable
clear clear#fresh:
clear
clean clean#fresh:
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
If you removed the make all line from your "fresh" target:
fresh :
rm -f *.o $(EXEC)
clear
You could simply run the command make fresh all, which will execute as make fresh; make all.
Some might consider this as a second instance of make, but it's certainly not a sub-instance of make (a make inside of a make), which is what your attempt seemed to result in.

Resources