is a program designed to simplify the maintenance of other programs.
Its input is a list of specifications as to the files upon which programs
and other files depend.
If the file
`makefile
'
exists, it is read for this list of specifications.
If it does not exist, the file
`Makefile
'
is read.
If the file
`.depend
'
exists, it is read (see
mkdep(1)).
This manual page is intended as a reference document only.
For a more thorough description of
and makefiles, please refer to
"Make - A Tutorial" .
The options are as follows:
-B
Try to be backwards compatible by executing a single shell per command and
by executing the commands to make the sources of a dependency line in sequence.
-D variable
Define
variable
to be 1, in the global context.
-d flags
Turn on debugging, and specify which portions of
are to print debugging information.
Flags
is one or more of the following:
A
Print all possible debugging information;
equivalent to specifying all of the debugging flags.
a
Print debugging information about archive searching and caching.
c
Print debugging information about conditional evaluation.
d
Print debugging information about directory searching and caching.
g1
Print the input graph before making anything.
g2
Print the input graph after making everything, or before exiting
on error.
j
Print debugging information about running multiple shells.
m
Print debugging information about making targets, including modification
dates.
s
Print debugging information about suffix-transformation rules.
t
Print debugging information about target list maintenance.
v
Print debugging information about variable assignment.
-e
Specify that environmental variables override macro assignments within
makefiles.
-f makefile
Specify a makefile to read instead of the default
`makefile
'
and
`Makefile
'
If
makefile
is
`-
'
standard input is read.
Multiple makefile's may be specified, and are read in the order specified.
-I directory
Specify a directory in which to search for makefiles and included makefiles.
The system makefile directory (or directories, see the
-m
option) is automatically included as part of this list.
-i
Ignore non-zero exit of shell commands in the makefile.
Equivalent to specifying
`-
'
before
each command line in the makefile.
-j max_jobs
Specify the maximum number of jobs that
may have running at any one time. Turns compatibility mode off, unless the
B
flag is also specified.
-k
Continue processing after errors are encountered, but only on those targets
that do not depend on the target whose creation caused the error.
-m directory
Specify a directory in which to search for sys.mk and makefiles included
via the <...> style. Multiple directories can be added to form a search path.
This path will override the default system include path: /usr/share/mk.
Furthermore the system include path will be appended to the search path used
for "..."-style inclusions (see the
-I
option).
-n
Display the commands that would have been executed, but do not actually
execute them.
-q
Do not execute any commands, but exit 0 if the specified targets are
up-to-date and 1, otherwise.
-r
Do not use the built-in rules specified in the system makefile.
-s
Do not echo any commands as they are executed.
Equivalent to specifying
`@
'
before each command line in the makefile.
-t
Rather than re-building a target as specified in the makefile, create it
or update its modification time to make it appear up-to-date.
-V variable
Print
's
idea of the value of
variable
in the global context.
Do not build any targets.
Multiple instances of this option may be specified;
the variables will be printed one per line,
with a blank line for each null or undefined variable.
variable=value
Set the value of the variable
variable
to
value
There are seven different types of lines in a makefile: file dependency
specifications, shell commands, variable assignments, include statements,
conditional directives, for loops, and comments.
In general, lines may be continued from one line to the next by ending
them with a backslash
(`\'
)
The trailing newline character and initial whitespace on the following
line are compressed into a single space.
FILE DEPENDENCY SPECIFICATIONS
Dependency lines consist of one or more targets, an operator, and zero
or more sources.
This creates a relationship where the targets ``depend'' on the sources
and are usually created from them.
The exact relationship between the target and the source is determined
by the operator that separates them.
The three operators are as follows:
:
A target is considered out-of-date if its modification time is less than
those of any of its sources.
Sources for a target accumulate over dependency lines when this operator
is used.
The target is removed if
is interrupted.
!
Targets are always re-created, but not until all sources have been
examined and re-created as necessary.
Sources for a target accumulate over dependency lines when this operator
is used.
The target is removed if
is interrupted.
::
If no sources are specified, the target is always re-created.
Otherwise, a target is considered out-of-date if any of its sources has
been modified more recently than the target.
Sources for a target do not accumulate over dependency lines when this
operator is used.
The target will not be removed if
is interrupted.
Targets and sources may contain the shell wildcard values
`?'
,
`*'
,
`[]'
and
`{}'
The values
`?'
,
`*'
and
`[]'
may only be used as part of the final
component of the target or source, and must be used to describe existing
files.
The value
`{}'
need not necessarily be used to describe existing files.
Expansion is in directory order, not alphabetically as done in the shell.
SHELL COMMANDS
Each target may have associated with it a series of shell commands, normally
used to create the target.
Each of the commands in this script
must
be preceded by a tab.
While any target may appear on a dependency line, only one of these
dependencies may be followed by a creation script, unless the
`::
'
operator is used.
If the first or first two characters of the command line are
`@
'
and/or
`-
'
,
the command is treated specially.
A
`@
'
causes the command not to be echoed before it is executed.
A
`-
'
causes any non-zero exit status of the command line to be ignored.
VARIABLE ASSIGNMENTS
Variables in make are much like variables in the shell, and, by tradition,
consist of all upper-case letters.
The five operators that can be used to assign values to variables are as
follows:
=
Assign the value to the variable.
Any previous value is overridden.
+=
Append the value to the current value of the variable.
?=
Assign the value to the variable if it is not already defined.
:=
Assign with expansion, i.e. expand the value before assigning it
to the variable.
Normally, expansion is not done until the variable is referenced.
!=
Expand the value and pass it to the shell for execution and assign
the result to the variable.
Any newlines in the result are replaced with spaces.
Any white-space before the assigned
value
is removed; if the value is being appended, a single space is inserted
between the previous contents of the variable and the appended value.
Variables are expanded by surrounding the variable name with either
curly braces
(`{}'
)
or parentheses
(`()'
)
and preceding it with
a dollar sign
(`$'
)
If the variable name contains only a single letter, the surrounding
braces or parentheses are not required.
This shorter form is not recommended.
Variable substitution occurs at two distinct times, depending on where
the variable is being used.
Variables in dependency lines are expanded as the line is read.
Variables in shell commands are expanded when the shell command is
executed.
The four different classes of variables (in order of increasing precedence)
are:
Environment variables
Variables defined as part of
's
environment.
Global variables
Variables defined in the makefile or in included makefiles.
Command line variables
Variables defined as part of the command line.
Local variables
Variables that are defined specific to a certain target.
The seven local variables are as follows:
.ALLSRC
The list of all sources for this target; also known as
`>
'
.ARCHIVE
The name of the archive file.
.IMPSRC
The name/path of the source from which the target is to be transformed
(the ``implied'' source); also known as
`<
'
.MEMBER
The name of the archive member.
.OODATE
The list of sources for this target that were deemed out-of-date; also
known as
`?
'
.PREFIX
The file prefix of the file, containing only the file portion, no suffix
or preceding directory components; also known as
`*
'
.TARGET
The name of the target; also known as
`@
'
The shorter forms
`@
'
,
`?
'
,
`>
'
and
`*
'
are permitted for backward
compatibility with historical makefiles and are not recommended.
The six variables
`@F
'
,
`@D
'
,
`<F
'
,
`<D
'
,
`*F
'
and
`*D
'
are
permitted for compatibility with
AT&T System
V
makefiles and are not recommended.
Four of the local variables may be used in sources on dependency lines
because they expand to the proper value for each target on the line.
These variables are
`.TARGET
'
,
`.PREFIX
'
,
`.ARCHIVE
'
,
and
`.MEMBER
'
In addition,
sets or knows about the following variables:
$
A single dollar sign
`$'
,
i.e.
`$$'
expands to a single dollar
sign.
.MAKE
The name that
was executed with
(argv[0]
)
.CURDIR
A path to the directory where
was executed.
.OBJDIR
A path to the directory where the targets are built.
MAKEFLAGS
The environment variable
`MAKEFLAGS
'
may contain anything that
may be specified on
's
command line.
Anything specified on
's
command line is appended to the
`MAKEFLAGS
'
variable which is then
entered into the environment for all programs which
executes.
PWD
Alternate path to the current directory.
normally sets
`.CURDIR
'
to the canonical path given by
getcwd(2).
However, if the environment variable
`PWD
'
is set and gives a path to the current directory, then
sets
`.CURDIR
'
to the value of
`PWD
'
instead.
`PWD
'
is set to the value of
`.OBJDIR
'
for all programs which
executes.
Variable expansion may be modified to select or modify each word of the
variable (where a ``word'' is white-space delimited sequence of characters).
The general format of a variable expansion is as follows:
{variable[:modifier[:...]]}
Each modifier begins with a colon and one of the following
special characters.
The colon may be escaped with a backslash
(`\'
)
E
Replaces each word in the variable with its suffix.
H
Replaces each word in the variable with everything but the last component.
M pattern
Select only those words that match the rest of the modifier.
The standard shell wildcard characters
( `*'
`?'
,
and
`[)]
'
may
be used.
The wildcard characters may be escaped with a backslash
(`\'
)
N pattern
This is identical to
`M
'
,
but selects all words which do not match
the rest of the modifier.
Q
Quotes every shell meta-character in the variable, so that it can be passed
safely through recursive invocations of
R
Replaces each word in the variable with everything but its suffix.
S / old_string
/ new_string/ [1g
]
Modify the first occurrence of
old_string
in the variable's value, replacing it with
new_string
If a
`g'
is appended to the last slash of the pattern, all occurrences
in each word are replaced.
If a
`1'
is appended to the last slash of the pattern, only the first word
is affected.
If
old_string
begins with a caret
(`^'
)
old_string
is anchored at the beginning of each word.
If
old_string
ends with a dollar sign
(`$'
)
it is anchored at the end of each word.
Inside
new_string
an ampersand
(`&'
)
is replaced by
old_string
(without any
`^'
or
`$'
) .
Any character may be used as a delimiter for the parts of the modifier
string.
The anchoring, ampersand and delimiter characters may be escaped with a
backslash
(`\'
)
Variable expansion occurs in the normal fashion inside both
old_string
and
new_string
with the single exception that a backslash is used to prevent the expansion
of a dollar sign
(`$'
)
not a preceding dollar sign as is usual.
C / pattern
/ replacement/ [1g
]
The
C
modifier is just like the
S
modifier except that the the old and new strings, instead of being
simple strings, are a regular expression (see
regex(3))
and an
ed(1)Ns-style
replacement string. Normally, the first occurrence of the pattern in
each word of the value is changed. The
`1'
modifier causes the substitution to apply to at most one word; the
`g'
modifier causes the substitution to apply to as many instances of the
search pattern as occur in the word or words it is found in. Note that
`1'
and
`g'
are orthogonal; the former specifies whether multiple words are
potentially affected, the latter whether multiple substitutions can
potentially occur within each affected word.
T
Replaces each word in the variable with its last component.
? true_string : false_string
If the variable evaluates to true, return as its value the
true_string,
otherwise return the
false_string.
old_string=new_string
This is the
AT&T System
V
style variable substitution.
It must be the last modifier specified.
If
old_string
or
new_string
do not contain the pattern matching character
%
then it is assumed that they are
anchored at the end of each word, so only suffixes or entire
words may be replaced. Otherwise
%
is the substring of
old_string
to be replaced in
new_string
INCLUDE STATEMENTS, CONDITIONALS AND FOR LOOPS
Makefile inclusion, conditional structures and for loops reminiscent
of the C programming language are provided in
All such structures are identified by a line beginning with a single
dot
(`.'
)
character.
Files are included with either
.include Aq file
or
.include file
Variables between the angle brackets or double quotes are expanded
to form the file name.
If angle brackets are used, the included makefile is expected to be in
the system makefile directory.
If double quotes are used, the including makefile's directory and any
directories specified using the
-I
option are searched before the system
makefile directory.
For compatibility with other versions of
`include'
file ...
is also accepted. If the include statement is written as
.-include
or as
.sinclude
then errors locating and/or opening include files are ignored.
Conditional expressions are also preceded by a single dot as the first
character of a line.
The possible conditionals are as follows:
.undef variable
Un-define the specified global variable.
Only global variables may be un-defined.
.if
[! expression
]
[operator expression ...
]
Test the value of an expression.
.ifdef
[! variable
]
[operator variable ...
]
Test the value of a variable.
.ifndef
[! variable
]
[operator variable ...
]
Test the value of a variable.
.ifmake
[! target
]
[operator target ...
]
Test the target being built.
.ifnmake
[! target
]
[operator target ...
]
Test the target being built.
.else
Reverse the sense of the last conditional.
.elif
[! expression
]
[operator expression ...
]
A combination of
`.else
'
followed by
`.if
'
.elifdef
[! variable
]
[operator variable ...
]
A combination of
`.else
'
followed by
`.ifdef
'
.elifndef
[! variable
]
[operator variable ...
]
A combination of
`.else
'
followed by
`.ifndef
'
.elifmake
[! target
]
[operator target ...
]
A combination of
`.else
'
followed by
`.ifmake
'
.elifnmake
[! target
]
[operator target ...
]
A combination of
`.else
'
followed by
`.ifnmake
'
.endif
End the body of the conditional.
The
operator
may be any one of the following:
||
logical OR
&&
Logical
AND
of higher precedence than
``||''
As in C,
will only evaluate a conditional as far as is necessary to determine
its value.
Parentheses may be used to change the order of evaluation.
The boolean operator
`!
'
may be used to logically negate an entire
conditional.
It is of higher precedence than
`&&
'
The value of
expression
may be any of the following:
defined
Takes a variable name as an argument and evaluates to true if the variable
has been defined.
make
Takes a target name as an argument and evaluates to true if the target
was specified as part of
's
command line or was declared the default target (either implicitly or
explicitly, see
.MAIN
before the line containing the conditional.
empty
Takes a variable, with possible modifiers, and evaluates to true if
the expansion of the variable would result in an empty string.
exists
Takes a file name as an argument and evaluates to true if the file exists.
The file is searched for on the system search path (see
.PATH )
target
Takes a target name as an argument and evaluates to true if the target
has been defined.
Expression
may also be an arithmetic or string comparison. Variable expansion is
performed on both sides of the comparison, after which the integral
values are compared. A value is interpreted as hexadecimal if it is
preceded by 0x, otherwise it is decimal; octal numbers are not supported.
The standard C relational operators are all supported. If after
variable expansion, either the left or right hand side of a
`==
'
or
`!=
'
operator is not an integral value, then
string comparison is performed between the expanded
variables.
If no relational operator is given, it is assumed that the expanded
variable is being compared against 0.
When
is evaluating one of these conditional expression, and it encounters
a word it doesn't recognize, either the ``make'' or ``defined''
expression is applied to it, depending on the form of the conditional.
If the form is
`.ifdef
'
or
`.ifndef
'
,
the ``defined'' expression
is applied.
Similarly, if the form is
`.ifmake
'
or
`.ifnmake
'
, the ``make''
expression is applied.
If the conditional evaluates to true the parsing of the makefile continues
as before.
If it evaluates to false, the following lines are skipped.
In both cases this continues until a
`.else
'
or
`.endif
'
is found.
For loops are typically used to apply a set of rules to a list of files.
The syntax of a for loop is:
.forvariableinexpression
<make-rules>
.endfor
After the for
expression
is evaluated, it is split into words. The
iteration
variable
is successively set to each word, and substituted in the
make-rules
inside the body of the for loop.
COMMENTS
Comments begin with a hash
(`#'
)
character, anywhere but in a shell
command line, and continue to the end of the line.
SPECIAL SOURCES
.IGNORE
Ignore any errors from the commands associated with this target, exactly
as if they all were preceded by a dash
(`-'
)
.MADE
Mark all sources of this target as being up-to-date.
.MAKE
Execute the commands associated with this target even if the
-n
or
-t
options were specified.
Normally used to mark recursive
's
.NOTMAIN
Normally
selects the first target it encounters as the default target to be built
if no target was specified.
This source prevents this target from being selected.
.OPTIONAL
If a target is marked with this attribute and
can't figure out how to create it, it will ignore this fact and assume
the file isn't needed or already exists.
.PRECIOUS
When
is interrupted, it removes any partially made targets.
This source prevents the target from being removed.
.SILENT
Do not echo any of the commands associated with this target, exactly
as if they all were preceded by an at sign
(`@'
)
.USE
Turn the target into
's
version of a macro.
When the target is used as a source for another target, the other target
acquires the commands, sources, and attributes (except for
.USE
of the
source.
If the target already has commands, the
.USE
target's commands are appended
to them.
.WAIT
If special
.WAIT
source is appears in a dependency line, the sources that precede it are
made before the sources that succeed it in the line. Loops are not being
detected and targets that form loops will be silently ignored.
SPECIAL TARGETS
Special targets may not be included with other targets, i.e. they must be
the only target specified.
.BEGIN
Any command lines attached to this target are executed before anything
else is done.
.DEFAULT
This is sort of a
.USE
rule for any target (that was used only as a
source) that
can't figure out any other way to create.
Only the shell script is used.
The
.IMPSRC
variable of a target that inherits
.DEFAULT 's
commands is set
to the target's own name.
.END
Any command lines attached to this target are executed after everything
else is done.
.IGNORE
Mark each of the sources with the
.IGNORE
attribute.
If no sources are specified, this is the equivalent of specifying the
-i
option.
.INTERRUPT
If
is interrupted, the commands for this target will be executed.
.MAIN
If no target is specified when
is invoked, this target will be built.
.MAKEFLAGS
This target provides a way to specify flags for
when the makefile is used.
The flags are as if typed to the shell, though the
-f
option will have
no effect.
.NOPATH
Apply the
.NOPATH
attribute to any specified sources. Targets with this attribute are not
searched for in the directories specified by
.PATH
.NOTPARALLEL
Disable parallel mode.
.NO_PARALLEL
Same as above, for compatibility with other pmake variants.
.ORDER
The named targets are made in sequence.
.PATH
The sources are directories which are to be searched for files not
found in the current directory.
If no sources are specified, any previously specified directories are
deleted.
.PHONY
Apply the
.PHONY
attribute to any specified sources. Targets with this attribute do not
correspond to actual files; they are always considered to be out of date,
and will not be created with the
-t
option.
.PRECIOUS
Apply the
.PRECIOUS
attribute to any specified sources.
If no sources are specified, the
.PRECIOUS
attribute is applied to every
target in the file.
.SILENT
Apply the
.SILENT
attribute to any specified sources.
If no sources are specified, the
.SILENT
attribute is applied to every
command in the file.
.SUFFIXES
Each source specifies a suffix to
If no sources are specified, any previous specified suffices are deleted.
ENVIRONMENT
utilizes the following environment variables, if they exist:
MACHINEMACHINE_ARCHMAKEMAKEFLAGSMAKEOBJDIR
and
PWD
