Taylor Blau <me@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> I could definitely see something like "make help" being helpful, since
> make itself doesn't have a convenient way to list all of a Makefile's
> targets.
But is listing all useful to begin with? I doubt it.
Most useful targets are all .PHONYs, so a possible approach is to
make them double-colon rules, and have a section at the top, next to
where we explain "# The default target of this Makefile is...", that
lists all of them there, and have a rule
# The default target of this Makefile is...
all::
+# Common targets
+test::
+doc::
+...
+help::
+ sed -e '/help::/q' Makefile
# Import tree-wide shared Makefile behavior and libraries
include shared.mak
perhaps?
> I worry about this list getting stale, though.
Absolutely.
A well-curated list of common targets, maybe, but I find nothing
interesting in the posted patch that lists way too many.
I also suspect that a well-curated list at the top would eliminate
the need for the "help" target in the first place. Between "make
help" and "less Makefile", the latter is much more intuitive.
Thanks.
