Programming - Make - Fake Target

By default, make only tries to build the first thing it finds.

hello: hello.c

NOTE: Here:

Fake Target

A fake target can be provided:

all : hello hello2 hello3

NOTE: This shows the target as all, probably not what is really wanted:

This actually works as long as there is never a file named all in the working directory.

This assumes that there are other rules elsewhere in the Makefile for the 3 hello programs so they can be built.

To prevent this usage of all being a problem, you can declare that target as phony by using this statement in the makefile:

.PHONY: all

NOTE: Actions can be attached to phony targets as well. For example:

.PHONY: clean
clean: 
  rm *.o

NOTE: You can issue make clean from the command line to remove all the object files.