Making make print commands before executing when NOT using CMake - makefile

Question

I see that this is the same question as
Making cmake print commands before executing
But that answer doesn't work for me. I'm guessing that answer only works with cmake. What options work without cmake?
Note tried these
make VERBOSE=1 target
make target VERBOSE=1
VERBOSE=1 make target
make V=1 target
make target V=1
V=1 make target
make -V target
make -v target
none of them worked.
make -v returns
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
This program built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

Answer 1

By default, make does print every command before executing it. This printing can be suppressed by one of the following mechanisms:
on a case-by-case basis, by adding # at the beginning of the command
globally, by adding the .SILENT built-in target.
somewhere along the make process, by invoking sub-make(s) with one of the flags -s, --silent or --quiet, as in $(MAKE) --silent -C someDir, for example. From that moment on, command echoing is suppressed in the sub-make.
If your makefile does not print the commands, then it is probably using one of these three mechanisms, and you have to actually inspect the makefile(s) to figure out which.
As a workaround to avoid these echo-suppressing mechanisms, you could re-define the shell to be used to use a debug mode, for example like make SHELL="/bin/bash -x" target. Other shells have similar options. With that approach, it is not make printing the commands, but the shell itself.
If you use the flag -n or --just-print, the echo-suppressing mechanisms will be ignored and you will always see all commands that make thinks should be executed -- but they are not actually executed, just printed. That might be a good way to figure out what you can actually expect to see.
The VERBOSE variable has no standard meaning for make, but only if your makefile interprets it.

Answer 2

For my version of make, I found BOTH paramters -n and -d helped.
GNU Make 3.80 Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc
-d Print lots of debugging information.
-n, --just-print, --dry-run, --recon
Don't actually run any commands; just print them.
When a bunch of makefile fragments are included, the line numbers don't make sense without this key debug flag.
CreateProcess(....exe,...)
Reading makefile `../../../../build/Makefile.options' (search path) (don't care) (no ~ expansion)...
Makefile:361: Extraneous text after `else' directive
Makefile:368: Extraneous text after `else' directive
Makefile:368: *** only one `else' per conditional. Stop.

Answer 3

in my case i was able to suppress commands in output by setting up below variable in top my make file
# Use `make V=1` to print commands.
$(V).SILENT:
add the above line in top of you make file and when you call any target it wont print
Before :
muhasan#admins-MacBook-Pro fx.identitymanagement % make dockerstatus
cd identity.API/ && docker-compose ps
Name Command State Ports
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
identityapi_backend_1 dotnet Identity.API.dll Up 0.0.0.0:5000->80/tcp
identityapi_db_1 docker-entrypoint.sh postgres Up 0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp
muhasan#admins-MacBook-Pro fx.identitymanagement %
After :
muhasan#admins-MacBook-Pro fx.identitymanagement % make dockerstatus
Name Command State Ports
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
identityapi_backend_1 dotnet Identity.API.dll Up 0.0.0.0:5000->80/tcp
identityapi_db_1 docker-entrypoint.sh postgres Up 0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp
muhasan#admins-MacBook-Pro fx.identitymanagement %
My Makefile
# Use `make V=1` to print commands.
$(V).SILENT:
Path = identity.API
builddocker:
cd devops && cp -rv Dockerfile docker-compose.yml ../${Path}/ && cd ..
installdocker:
cd ${Path}/ && docker-compose up -d
dockerstatus:
cd ${Path}/ && docker-compose ps

Answer 4

I think this is what you want:
make MAKE_VERBOSE=1 target