Re: Makefile target selection

[John Graham-Cumming]

zuheyr alsalihi wrote:
> Is there any way to know in a Makefile which target is wanted to build?
> E.g. if I have targets all, A and B, how can I use conditionals in the
> Makefile depening on the target?

In GNU Make there's a built-in variable called MAKECMDGOALS which lists 
(in standard space-separated list format) the goals that were specified 
on the command line.

For example if you

    make foo bar

then MAKECMDGOALS will be foo bar.   You can check for the presence of a 
specific goal by using the $(filter ) function.

For example, to check for the goal bar you could do the following

    BAR_PRESENT := $(filter bar,$(MAKECMDGOALS))

BAR_PRESENT will be set to bar if bar was specified on the command-line, 
or an empty string if not.  So then you can make parts of the Makefile 
optional as follows:

    ifdef $(BAR_PRESENT)
        ... do this is bar is a goal ...
    endif

John.