Re: executing a rule prior to any targets?

[gk]

At 11:52 PM 10/18/2002 -0400, Paul D. Smith wrote:
> Or you could put this into a variable assignment, where it won't be
> parsed as a possible rule:
>
>   _x := $(if $(RECURSE), $(shell RECURSE=; $(MAKE) recurse ) )
>
> This is typically how $(shell ...) would be used, otherwise the output
> of the make command would be considered make syntax which should be
> parsed, which is probably not what you want.

Now I understand much better.

Yes, the method you suggest above does work but the problem is that output 
is 'swallowed' by assignment to _x and doesn't appear in the terminal.

I would like to be have $(MAKE) recurse run just like if I had typed 'make 
recurse' on the command line.
I wanted to do something similar with a 'debug' rule to echo some makefile 
variables to the terminal; to somehow invoke the rule from the makefile, 
without it having to be a target.

The problem I am trying to solve is:
* I do not want to specify 'recurse' as a command line goal; I want to 
build $(MAKECMDGOALS) in each directory in my list:
recurse :
        @for dir in $(SUBDIRS); do\
                $(MAKE) -C $$dir $(MAKECMDGOALS); \
        done

I could add 'recurse' as a command line goal, then remove it from 
$(MAKECMDGOALS) in the makefile:
GOALS = $(filter-out recurse, $(MAKECMDGOALS) )
recurse :
        @for dir in $(SUBDIRS); do\
                $(MAKE) -C $$dir $(GOALS); \
        done

This seems a bit awkward though.
Can anyone suggest a more straight-forward way to explicitly execute a rule?

Thanks,
Greg Keraunen <address@hidden>