make-help

This is a npm package to help you document your make tasks.

Usage

Install the package with the following command:

npm install make-help

Then document the targets with a comment in your Makefile, like so:

# generate all assets
build: scripts styles
 
# generete scripts
scripts:
    ...
 
# generete styles
styles:
    ...

After that, just add a help target:

# show some help
help:
    echo ''
    echo '  Usage:'
    echo '    make <target>'
    echo ''
    echo '  Targets:'
    npx make-help -p 4 Makefile
    echo ''

And voilà! Run make help to get a nice usage message:

  Usage:
    make <target>

  Targets:
    build    generate all assets
    help     show some help
    scripts  generete scripts
    styles   generete styles

Tip:

Tell make to use help as the default goal when no targets are provided, put the following line at the top of your makefile:

.DEFAULT_GOAL := help

System

This project only runs on Unix systems and depends on AWK.