Fed up w/ my ad-hoc scripts to display the targets and variables in a makefile(s), I’ve decided to write a reusable piece of code to do that: https://github.com/bahmanm/bmakelib/issues/81


The first step toward that would be to understand the common commenting styles. So far I have identified 4 patterns in the wild which you can find below.

Are there any style guides/conventions around this topic? Any references to well-written makefiles I can get inspiration from?


A

VAR1 = foo   ## short one-liner comment
my-target:   ## short one-liner comment 

B

# longer comment which 
# may span
# several lines
VAR1 = foo

## comments can be prefixed w/ more than # 
## lorem ipsum dolor
my-target: 
	…

C

#####
# a comment block which is marked w/ several #s on
# an otherwise blank line
#####
VAR1 = foo

D

#####
#>    # heading 1
#     This is a variation to have markdown comments
#     inside makefile comments.
#
#     ## It's a made-up style!  
#     I came up w/ this style and used it to document `bmakelib`.
#     For example: https://is.gd/QtiqyA (opens github)
#<
#####
VAR1 = foo
  • @ttmrichter
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    27 months ago

    What kind of a maniac comments Makefiles? It was hard to set up, so it should be hard to read and alter, dammit!

    • @ttmrichter
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      17 months ago

      (Because this is the Internet, add a /s to the end of the previous message for full comprehension.)

      • bahmanmOPM
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        17 months ago

        What’s /s supposed to do in this context? 🤔 It looks like a Windoze/.NET command line option.