'bash completion of makefile target

Suppose I have a simple makefile like:

hello:
   echo "hello world"

bye:
   echo "bye bye"

Then in bash I want something like:

make h < tab >

so it can complete to

make hello

I found a simple way like creating empty files hello and bye but I'm looking for something more sophisticated.

makefile bash-completion

Solution 1:^[1]

Could this be what you're looking for?

http://freshmeat.net/projects/bashcompletion/

make [Tab] would complete on all targets in Makefile. This project was conceived to produce programmable completion routines for the most common Linux/UNIX commands, reducing the amount of typing sysadmins and programmers need to do on a daily basis.

Solution 2:^[2]

Add this in your ~/.bash_profile file or ~/.bashrc file

complete -W "\`grep -oE '^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+:([^=]|$)' ?akefile | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9_.-]*$//'\`" make

This searches for a target in your Makefile titled 'Makefile' or 'makefile' (note the capital ? wildcard in ?akefile) using grep, and pipes it over to the complete command in bash which is used to specify how arguments are autocompleted. The -W flag denotes that the input to the complete command will be a wordlist which is accomplished by passing the results of grep through sed which arranges it into the desirable wordlist format.

Caveats and gotchas:

Your make file is named 'GNUMakefile' or anything else other than 'Makefile' or 'makefile'. If you frequently encounter such titles consider changing the regular expression ?akefile accordingly.
Forgetting to source your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc file after making the changes. I add this seemingly trivial detail since, to the uninitiated it is unfamiliar. For any change to your bash files to take effect, source them using the command
```
source ~/.bashrc
```
or
```
source ~/.bash_profile
```

PS. You also now have the added ability to display the possible make targets by pressing [Tab] twice just like in bash completion. Just make sure you add a space after the command make before typing [Tab] twice.

Solution 3:^[3]

There's a useful package called bash-completion available for most every OS. It includes Makefile completion.

(If you're using macOS and Homebrew, you can get this via brew install bash-completion.)

Solution 4:^[4]

This seems to be default in at least Debian Lenny:

$ grep Makefile /etc/bash_completion
    # make reads `GNUmakefile', then `makefile', then `Makefile'
    elif [ -f ${makef_dir}/Makefile ]; then
        makef=${makef_dir}/Makefile
    # before we scan for targets, see if a Makefile name was
    # deal with included Makefiles

The header of this file states:

#   The latest version of this software can be obtained here:
#
#   http://bash-completion.alioth.debian.org/
#
#   RELEASE: 20080617.5

Solution 5:^[5]

Here is a completion script that looks at the .PHONY: declaration.

_make_phony_words() {
  local opt_revert

  if [ -n "${BASH_VERSION:-}" ]; then
    shopt -q nullglob || {
      opt_revert=1 ; shopt -s nullglob ;
    }

  elif [ -n "${ZSH_VERSION:-}" ]; then
    [[ -o nullglob ]] || {
      opt_revert=1 ; setopt nullglob
    }
  fi

  for f in ./?akefile ./*.make ; do
    sed -nEe '/^.PHONY/ { s/^.PHONY:[ ]?// ; p ; } ' "$f" | tr ' ' $'\n' | sort -u
  done

  if [ -n "$opt_revert" ]; then

    [ -n "${ZSH_VERSION:-}" ] && unsetopt nullglob
    [ -n "${BASH_VERSION:-}" ] && shopt -u nullglob
  fi
  unset opt_revert

}

_make_phony_complete() {
  local cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"

  COMPREPLY+=( $(compgen -W "$( _make_phony_words )" -- ${cur}) )

}
complete -F _make_phony_complete make

Solution 6:^[6]

Makefile completion on steroids!

I had 2 problems with the normal completions:

Problem #1

Sometimes you have targets you want to call like make greet:hi and make greet:hola sort of like namespacing Makefile target names. So your Makefile ends up looking like:

greet\:hola:
   echo "hola world"

# OR a .PHONY target
.PHONY: greet\:hi
greet\:hi:
   echo "hi world"

In this case the auto-completions after : don't show up as it uses \: in the Makefile as shown above.

Problem #2

There wasn't a way to navigate through the list of all Makefile targets that match my input using arrow keys (or CTRL-p / CTRL-n) in my bash shell.

Basically, I wanted to use fuzzy search like approach on the targets (i.e. fzf). FZF Repo: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

Solution

Install FZF Dependency

Using Homebrew

You can use Homebrew (on macOS or Linux) to install fzf.

brew install fzf
$(brew --prefix)/opt/fzf/install

Using Linux package managers

Package Manager	Linux Distribution	Command
APK	Alpine Linux	`sudo apk add fzf`
APT	Debian 9+/Ubuntu 19.10+	`sudo apt-get install fzf`
Conda		`conda install -c conda-forge fzf`
DNF	Fedora	`sudo dnf install fzf`
Nix	NixOS, etc.	`nix-env -iA nixpkgs.fzf`
Pacman	Arch Linux	`sudo pacman -S fzf`
pkg	FreeBSD	`pkg install fzf`
pkgin	NetBSD	`pkgin install fzf`
pkg_add	OpenBSD	`pkg_add fzf`
XBPS	Void Linux	`sudo xbps-install -S fzf`
Zypper	openSUSE	`sudo zypper install fzf`

FZF and `:` compatible auto-complete command

Put this in your .bashrc

complete -W "\`grep -oE '^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+[\\:]*[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+:([^=]|$)' ?akefile | sort | uniq | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9_.-]*$//' | sed 's/[\]//g' | fzf\`" make

Now just typing make and then hitting the key will work!

DEMO: in action!

Then you can use as following:

make using fzf

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1	Kos
Solution 2
Solution 3	Paul Bissex
Solution 4	mvds
Solution 5	Alissa H
Solution 6	Shahzad Lone

'bash completion of makefile target

Solution 1:[1]

Solution 2:[2]

Solution 3:[3]

Solution 4:[4]

Solution 5:[5]

Solution 6:[6]