Suppress echo of command invocation in makefile?

linux unix makefile posix
noobler picture noobler · Apr 1, 2012 · Viewed 76.4k times · Source

I wrote a program for an assignment which is supposed to print its output to stdout. The assignment spec requires the creation of a Makefile which when invoked as make run > outputFile should run the program and write the output to a file, which has a SHA1 fingerprint identical to the one given in the spec.

My problem is that my makefile:

...
run:
     java myprogram

also prints the command which runs my program (e.g. java myprogram) to the output file, so that my file includes this extra line causing the fingerprint to be wrong.

Is there any way to execute a command without the command invocation echoing to the command line?

Answer

user405725 picture user405725 · Apr 1, 2012

Add @ to the beginning of command to tell gmake not to print the command being executed. Like this:

run:
     @java myprogram

As Oli suggested, this is a feature of Make and not of Bash.

On the other hand, Bash will never echo commands being executed unless you tell it to do so explicitly (i.e. with -x option).

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