makefilebsdmake

Catchall target with BSD's make

In a BSD Makefile, is it possible to define a catch-all target? I'm looking for the GNU equivalent of:

%:
    @echo caught target $@

I was hoping that the preprocessor possesses enough magic to define a target on the fly, but couldn't figure out how to do so. All local variables, such as .TARGET, only work within a target but not at global scope.

Solution

  • I don't know if BSD make qualifies, but every POSIX-compliant version of make must support the .DEFAULT: special target which does this, even in GNU make, without the overhead of using a catch-all pattern like %:

    .DEFAULT:
        @echo caught target $@