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9.8 Summary of Options

Here is a table of all the options make understands:

-b
-m

These options are ignored for compatibility with other versions of make.

-B
--always-make

Consider all targets out-of-date. GNU make proceeds to consider targets and their prerequisites using the normal algorithms; however, all targets so considered are always remade regardless of the status of their prerequisites. To avoid infinite recursion, if MAKE_RESTARTS (see Other Special Variables) is set to a number greater than 0 this option is disabled when considering whether to remake makefiles (see How Makefiles Are Remade).

-C dir
--directory=dir

Change to directory dir before reading the makefiles. If multiple ‘-C’ options are specified, each is interpreted relative to the previous one: ‘-C / -C etc’ is equivalent to ‘-C /etc’. This is typically used with recursive invocations of make (see Recursive Use of make).

-d

Print debugging information in addition to normal processing. The debugging information says which files are being considered for remaking, which file-times are being compared and with what results, which files actually need to be remade, which implicit rules are considered and which are applied—everything interesting about how make decides what to do. The -d option is equivalent to ‘--debug=a’ (see below).

--debug[=options]

Print debugging information in addition to normal processing. Various levels and types of output can be chosen. With no arguments, print the “basic” level of debugging. Possible arguments are below; only the first character is considered, and values must be comma- or space-separated.

a (all)

All types of debugging output are enabled. This is equivalent to using ‘-d’.

b (basic)

Basic debugging prints each target that was found to be out-of-date, and whether the build was successful or not.

v (verbose)

A level above ‘basic’; includes messages about which makefiles were parsed, prerequisites that did not need to be rebuilt, etc. This option also enables ‘basic’ messages.

i (implicit)

Prints messages describing the implicit rule searches for each target. This option also enables ‘basic’ messages.

j (jobs)

Prints messages giving details on the invocation of specific sub-commands.

m (makefile)

By default, the above messages are not enabled while trying to remake the makefiles. This option enables messages while rebuilding makefiles, too. Note that the ‘all’ option does enable this option. This option also enables ‘basic’ messages.

p (print)

Prints the recipe to be executed, even when the recipe is normally silent (due to .SILENT or ‘@’). Also prints the makefile name and line number where the recipe was defined.

w (why)

Explains why each target must be remade by showing which prerequisites are more up to date than the target.

n (none)

Disable all debugging currently enabled. If additional debugging flags are encountered after this they will still take effect.

-e
--environment-overrides

Give variables taken from the environment precedence over variables from makefiles. See Variables from the Environment.

-E string
--eval=string

Evaluate string as makefile syntax. This is a command-line version of the eval function (see The eval Function). The evaluation is performed after the default rules and variables have been defined, but before any makefiles are read.

-f file
--file=file
--makefile=file

Read the file named file as a makefile. See Writing Makefiles.

-h
--help

Remind you of the options that make understands and then exit.

-i
--ignore-errors

Ignore all errors in recipes executed to remake files. See Errors in Recipes.

-I dir
--include-dir=dir

Specifies a directory dir to search for included makefiles. See Including Other Makefiles. If several ‘-I’ options are used to specify several directories, the directories are searched in the order specified. If the directory dir is a single dash (-) then any already-specified directories up to that point (including the default directory paths) will be discarded. You can examine the current list of directories to be searched via the .INCLUDE_DIRS variable.

-j [jobs]
--jobs[=jobs]

Specifies the number of recipes (jobs) to run simultaneously. With no argument, make runs as many recipes simultaneously as possible. If there is more than one ‘-j’ option, the last one is effective. See Parallel Execution, for more information on how recipes are run. Note that this option is ignored on MS-DOS.

--jobserver-style=[style]

Chooses the style of jobserver to use. This option only has effect if parallel builds are enabled (see Parallel Execution). On POSIX systems style can be one of fifo (the default) or pipe. On Windows the only acceptable style is sem (the default). This option is useful if you need to use an older versions of GNU make, or a different tool that requires a specific jobserver style.

-k
--keep-going

Continue as much as possible after an error. While the target that failed, and those that depend on it, cannot be remade, the other prerequisites of these targets can be processed all the same. See Testing the Compilation of a Program.

-l [load]
--load-average[=load]
--max-load[=load]

Specifies that no new recipes should be started if there are other recipes running and the load average is at least load (a floating-point number). With no argument, removes a previous load limit. See Parallel Execution.

--check-symlink-times

On systems that support symbolic links, this option causes make to consider the timestamps on any symbolic links in addition to the timestamp on the file referenced by those links. When this option is provided, the most recent timestamp among the file and the symbolic links is taken as the modification time for this target file.

-n
--just-print
--dry-run
--recon

Print the recipe that would be executed, but do not execute it (except in certain circumstances). See Instead of Executing Recipes.

-o file
--old-file=file
--assume-old=file

Do not remake the file file even if it is older than its prerequisites, and do not remake anything on account of changes in file. Essentially the file is treated as very old and its rules are ignored. See Avoiding Recompilation of Some Files.

-O[type]
--output-sync[=type]

Ensure that the complete output from each recipe is printed in one uninterrupted sequence. This option is only useful when using the --jobs option to run multiple recipes simultaneously (see Parallel Execution) Without this option output will be displayed as it is generated by the recipes.

With no type or the type ‘target’, output from the entire recipe of each target is grouped together. With the type ‘line’, output from each line in the recipe is grouped together. With the type ‘recurse’, the output from an entire recursive make is grouped together. With the type ‘none’, no output synchronization is performed. See Output During Parallel Execution.

-p
--print-data-base

Print the data base (rules and variable values) that results from reading the makefiles; then execute as usual or as otherwise specified. This also prints the version information given by the ‘-v’ switch (see below). To print the data base without trying to remake any files, use ‘make -qp. To print the data base of predefined rules and variables, use ‘make -p -f /dev/null. The data base output contains file name and line number information for recipe and variable definitions, so it can be a useful debugging tool in complex environments.

-q
--question

“Question mode”. Do not run any recipes, or print anything; just return an exit status that is zero if the specified targets are already up to date, one if any remaking is required, or two if an error is encountered. See Instead of Executing Recipes.

-r
--no-builtin-rules

Eliminate use of the built-in implicit rules (see Using Implicit Rules). You can still define your own by writing pattern rules (see Defining and Redefining Pattern Rules). The ‘-r’ option also clears out the default list of suffixes for suffix rules (see Old-Fashioned Suffix Rules). But you can still define your own suffixes with a rule for .SUFFIXES, and then define your own suffix rules. Note that only rules are affected by the -r option; default variables remain in effect (see Variables Used by Implicit Rules); see the ‘-R’ option below.

-R
--no-builtin-variables

Eliminate use of the built-in rule-specific variables (see Variables Used by Implicit Rules). You can still define your own, of course. The ‘-R’ option also automatically enables the ‘-r’ option (see above), since it doesn’t make sense to have implicit rules without any definitions for the variables that they use.

-s
--silent
--quiet

Silent operation; do not print the recipes as they are executed. See Recipe Echoing.

-S
--no-keep-going
--stop

Cancel the effect of the ‘-k’ option. This is never necessary except in a recursive make where ‘-k’ might be inherited from the top-level make via MAKEFLAGS (see Recursive Use of make) or if you set ‘-k’ in MAKEFLAGS in your environment.

--shuffle[=mode]

This option enables a form of fuzz-testing of prerequisite relationships. When parallelism is enabled (‘-j’) the order in which targets are built becomes less deterministic. If prerequisites are not fully declared in the makefile this can lead to intermittent and hard-to-track-down build failures.

The ‘--shuffle’ option forces make to purposefully reorder goals and prerequisites so target/prerequisite relationships still hold, but ordering of prerequisites of a given target are reordered as described below.

The order in which prerequisites are listed in automatic variables is not changed by this option.

The .NOTPARALLEL pseudo-target disables shuffling for that makefile. Also any prerequisite list which contains .WAIT will not be shuffled. See Disabling Parallel Execution.

The ‘--shuffle=’ option accepts these values:

random

Choose a random seed for the shuffle. This is the default if no mode is specified. The chosen seed is also provided to sub-make commands. The seed is included in error messages so that it can be re-used in future runs to reproduce the problem or verify that it has been resolved.

reverse

Reverse the order of goals and prerequisites, rather than a random shuffle.

seed

Use ‘random’ shuffle initialized with the specified seed value. The seed is an integer.

none

Disable shuffling. This negates any previous ‘--shuffle’ options.

-t
--touch

Touch files (mark them up to date without really changing them) instead of running their recipes. This is used to pretend that the recipes were done, in order to fool future invocations of make. See Instead of Executing Recipes.

--trace

Show tracing information for make execution. Using --trace is shorthand for --debug=print,why.

-v
--version

Print the version of the make program plus a copyright, a list of authors, and a notice that there is no warranty; then exit.

-w
--print-directory

Print a message containing the working directory both before and after executing the makefile. This may be useful for tracking down errors from complicated nests of recursive make commands. See Recursive Use of make. (In practice, you rarely need to specify this option since ‘make’ does it for you; see The ‘--print-directory’ Option.)

--no-print-directory

Disable printing of the working directory under -w. This option is useful when -w is turned on automatically, but you do not want to see the extra messages. See The ‘--print-directory’ Option.

-W file
--what-if=file
--new-file=file
--assume-new=file

Pretend that the target file has just been modified. When used with the ‘-n’ flag, this shows you what would happen if you were to modify that file. Without ‘-n’, it is almost the same as running a touch command on the given file before running make, except that the modification time is changed only in the imagination of make. See Instead of Executing Recipes.

--warn-undefined-variables

Issue a warning message whenever make sees a reference to an undefined variable. This can be helpful when you are trying to debug makefiles which use variables in complex ways.


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