How to get the invoking target of makefile?

makefile gnu gnu-make
Justin picture Justin · Jul 8, 2010 · Viewed 26.4k times · Source

How to get the invoking target of the GNU make Makefile?

for example, I invoke make with the following command line:

make a-target

How can I get the invoking target "a-target" in the Makefile and assign it to a variable?

Further more, if more than one target is specified on the command line:

make target1 target2 ...

How do I get all of them?

Answer

Beta picture Beta · Jul 8, 2010

The variable MAKECMDGOALS contains the list of targets that were specified on the command line, no matter how many (it's empty if there were none).

Related questions

Makefile ifeq logical AND

I would like to check multiple conditions in an if loop of GNU make file. Here's an example: ifeq ($(TEST_FLAG),TRUE && ($(DEBUG_FLAG),FALSE)) true statement else false statement endif What's the right way to do it?

Read More
Disable make builtin rules and variables from inside the make file

I want to disable builtin rules and variables as per passing the -r and -R options to GNU make, from inside the make file. Other solutions that allow me to do this implicitly and transparently are also welcome. I've found …

Read More
Passing additional variables from command line to make

Can I pass variables to a GNU Makefile as command line arguments? In other words, I want to pass some arguments which will eventually become variables in the Makefile.

Read More