makefile-help

An easy way to add an auto-generated make help target to your Node.js project's Makefile.

This makes make command discovery nicer, while still using the same make tool that's available in pretty much every dev environment. If you're looking for something a bit more powerful, but at the expense of installing something new, check out tj/mmake!

Example

For a makefile like...

ifneq ($(wildcard ./node_modules),)
  include ./node_modules/makefile-help/Makefile
endif

# Run commands with the node debugger. (default: false)
DEBUG ?= false

ifeq ($(DEBUG),false)
  node = node
else
  node = node debug
endif

# Remove all of the derived files.
clean: 
  @ rm -rf ./node_modules ./lib

# Compile the source with babel.
lib: 
  @ ./node_modules/.bin/babel-cli --out-dir ./lib ./src

# Start the development server.
start:
  @ $(node) ./server/index.js

Running make help will print out...

$ make help

  Usage:

    make <target> [flags...]

  Targets:

    clean   Remove all of the derived files.
    help    Show this help prompt.
    lib     Compile the source with babel.
    start   Start the development server.

  Flags:

    DEBUG    Run commands with the node debugger. (default: false)

Installation

yarn add makefile-help

npm install --save makefile-help

Usage

To use it, include this module's Makefile in your own...

ifneq ($(wildcard ./node_modules),)
  include ./node_modules/makefile-help/Makefile
endif

And then run...

$ make help

The help command will auto-populate from targets that look like:

# This comment will show up for the target in the help.
target:

And also for flag definitions like:

# This comment will show up for the flag in the help.
FLAG ?=