Having a
Makefile in my projects is something I love. It is a common entry point for all the usual workflow commands in a project. It also serves as a reference for those commands you never remember. New team members can pick the makefile and start developing right away (if everything is configured properly)Makefiles can also be big and do complex things. So it is a good thing to have some kind of help dialog as the default target.
During the years I see this gist evolve with smart
help targets to allow the makefile to be self-documented (it is always the first in my google search!). The idea is to include ## after a target and add there the documentation for the target. The last ones are particularly smart.Clean makefile help
Just add the following target into your makefile
help: ## show help message @awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":.*##"; printf "\nUsage:\n \033[36m\033[0m\n"} /^[$$()% a-zA-Z_-]+:.*?##/ { printf " \033[36m%-15s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$2 } /^##@/ { printf "\n\033[1m%s\033[0m\n", substr($$0, 5) } ' $(MAKEFILE_LIST)
I like that this one has colors too and it is my current favorite.
Docker-based solution
This one is interesting. Use a lightweight docker image to generate the help message. Courtesy of Xanders GitHub user.
# Show this help help: @cat $(MAKEFILE_LIST) | docker run --rm -i xanders/make-help
Although nowadays the most likely scenario is that you have docker installed and running, I prefer to not depend on that for the help command unless I am using docker for other targets