In one of my previousblog. I wrote how you could make your life easier when you start using Makefile. But when you start using Makefile in many projects. The targets that you use may vary from project to project.

In this blog post I will address a trick how you could write ahelp target. Lets imagine that we have a project that allow you tobuild,start andstop a docker container. These names are pretty straightforward. But without looking in the Makefile you never know for sure.

By calling thehelp target you could list all available targets:

makehelp

When you have a look at the Makefile used for this blog post. It looks like this:

.DEFAULT_GOAL:=help.PHONY:helphelp:## Display this help$(info Example Makefileformy blog post)awk'BEGIN {FS = ":.*##"; printf "\nUsage:\n  make \033[36m<target>\033[0m\n"} /^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+:.*?##/ { printf "  \033[36m%-15s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$2 } /^##@/ { printf "\n\033[1m%s\033[0m\n", substr($$0, 5) } '$(MAKEFILE_LIST).PHONY:buildbuild:## Build the container image    docker build-t my-container:latest ..PHONY:stopstop:## Stop the container    docker stop my-named-container> /dev/null 2>&1|| True    dockerrmmy-named-container> /dev/null 2>&1|| True.PHONY:startstart:stop## Start the container    docker run--name my-named-container my-container:latest> /dev/null.PHONY:shellshell:## Start a shell session on the container    docker run-it my-named-container:latest bash.PHONY:logslogs:## Tail the logs of the running container    docker logs my-named-container-f$(VERBOSE).SILENT:

You need to add thehelp target. And for each target you need to supply a help text. And each target needs a prefix with##.

By adding ahelp target to your Makefile you make it easier to use for others. But also for yourself because you don't need to remember each target in the Makefile.

Photo bylalesh aldarwish