Re: [PATCHv2] Makefile: implement help target

On 09/28/2010 03:38 PM, Michael J Gruber wrote:

with automatic help text collection from lines starting with "# Help: " and
preceding a make target.

Suggested-by: Stephen Boyd <redacted>
Helped-by: Andreas Ericsson [off-list ref]
Signed-off-by: Michael J Gruber <redacted>
---
Now how's this for portability and such? New output:

Build targets:
    all:                Build the Git suite
    dist:               Build git-$(GIT_VERSION).tar.gz source
    dist-doc:           Build $(manpages).tar.gz and $(htmldocs).tar.gz

<snip>

 Makefile |   43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

Very nice.  Too bad we have more targets than fit in my 33-line terminal.

/bikeshed

How about this micro-tweak:

  1) Remove the colon from the targets so they sort correctly.
     i.e. so "dist" sorts before "dist-doc" and "install" sorts
          before "install-*"
  2) Add " - " prefix to description strings and reduce target
     width accordingly so we still have just as much room for
     the description string.

So the output looks like this:

Build targets:
    all                - Build the Git suite
    dist               - Build git-$(GIT_VERSION).tar.gz source
    dist-doc           - Build $(manpages).tar.gz and $(htmldocs).tar.gz
    doc                - Build man pages and HTML docs
    html               - Build HTML doc
    info               - Build info docs
    man                - Build man pages
    pdf                - Build PDF docs
    rpm                - Build source and binary RPM packages
Clean targets:
    clean              - Remove generated files but keep the configure script
    distclean          - Remove generated files and the configure script
Develop targets:
    TAGS               - Generate tags using etags
    cscope             - Generate cscope index
    tags               - Generate tags using ctags
Help targets:
    help               - Show help for main make targets
Install targets:
    install            - Install the Git suite
    install-doc        - Install man pages
    install-html       - Install HTML docs
    install-info       - Install info docs
    install-man        - Install man pages
    install-pdf        - Install PDF docs
    quick-install-doc  - Install pregenerated man pages from origin/man
    quick-install-html - Install pregenerated HTML pages from origin/html
    quick-install-man  - Install pregenerated man pages from origin/man
Test targets:
    check-docs         - Check documentation coverage
    cover_db_html      - Check test coverage and create HTML report
    coverage           - Check test coverage
    test               - Check the build by running the test suite


(Warning: copy/pasted):

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index c7f0bb7..2803aa1 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile

@@ -2398,10 +2398,10 @@ help:
        @awk '/^# Help:/ { l=substr($$0,8); \
                getline; \
                j=index(l,":"); \
-               print substr(l,1,j-1), substr($$0,1,index($$0,":")), substr(l,j+2); \
+               print substr(l,1,j-1), substr($$0,1,index($$0,":")-1), substr(l,j+2); \
                }' <Makefile | sort | while read category target text; \
        do \
                test "$$category" = "$$currcat" || printf "$$category targets:\n"; \
                currcat="$$category"; \
-               printf "    %-20s%s\n" "$$target" "$$text"; \
+               printf "    %-18s - %s\n" "$$target" "$$text"; \
        done

Oh, by the way, tested and works on Solaris 10 and IRIX 6.5.

-Brandon