Makefile Generator

Makefile generator - targets, commands and a self-documenting help

The Makefile generator turns a list of name: command tasks into a ready Makefile: real tab characters in every recipe, a .PHONY declaration covering all targets, and a help target that prints the available commands by itself. Type a project name, paste your tasks and copy the result into the root of your repository.

What this tool actually produces

Every line of the form is split on the first colon: the left side becomes the target name, the right side the shell command. A name may contain only letters, digits, underscores and hyphens, so you cannot end up with a target Make refuses to call. An empty command becomes echo "name", so the file stays runnable and the target is visibly a placeholder. Repeated names are merged into one entry, because a second recipe for the same target triggers the overriding recipe for target warning.

The file opens with a comment carrying your project name. Next comes .DEFAULT_GOAL := help, so a bare make prints help instead of building whatever target happens to be first. Then a single .PHONY line lists every target, and finally the targets themselves appear in the order you entered them, each with a ## comment that the help target turns into a command listing.

Anatomy of a Makefile

Tabs instead of spaces - the classic Make trap

Disable tab conversion for files named Makefile in your editor. To inspect a suspicious file, run cat -A Makefile - a correct recipe line starts with ^I. GNU Make does let you change the indent character through .RECIPEPREFIX, but that breaks portability, so sticking with the tab is the safer choice.

Dollar signs and variables inside recipes

Make expands $ before the line ever reaches the shell, which is why shell variables and awk fields are written twice: $$PATH, $$1, $$(date). A single $(FOO) is a Make variable, and $(shell date) runs while the file is being parsed rather than while the target executes. The help target from this generator uses both forms at once: $(MAKEFILE_LIST) stays on the Make side, while $$1 and $$2 reach awk as column numbers.

How to use the generator

1. Enter a project name - it goes into the comment on the first line of the file.
2. List your tasks, one per line, in the name: command format, for example test: vendor/bin/phpunit.
3. Click Generate Makefile and copy the result.
4. Save the contents as Makefile (capital M) in the root of your project.
5. Run make or make help to see the target list, then run the one you need: make test.

A Makefile fits into the rest of the toolchain: a short make deploy can be called from a pipeline built with the GitLab CI configuration generator or the Jenkinsfile generator, while recurring jobs belong in the crontab generator. Before the first commit the .gitignore file generator helps, and for an Apache deployment so does the .htaccess file generator.

What this tool does not do

One target gets exactly one command. Multi-line recipes, prerequisites, variables, ifeq conditionals and pattern rules such as %.o: %.c you add by hand to the generated skeleton. The generator also does not check whether a command exists on your system - it validates the line format and the target name.

Frequently asked questions