How to pass input parameters to make? [duplicate] - c++

Question

How to pass argument to Makefile from command line?
I understand I can do
$ make action VAR="value"
$ value
with Makefile
VAR = "default"
action:
#echo $(VAR)
How do I get the following behavior?
$ make action value
value
How about
$make action value1 value2
value1 value2

Answer 1

You probably shouldn't do this; you're breaking the basic pattern of how Make works. But here it is:
action:
#echo action $(filter-out $#,$(MAKECMDGOALS))
%: # thanks to chakrit
#: # thanks to William Pursell
EDIT:
To explain the first command,
$(MAKECMDGOALS) is the list of "targets" spelled out on the command line, e.g. "action value1 value2".
$# is an automatic variable for the name of the target of the rule, in this case "action".
filter-out is a function that removes some elements from a list. So $(filter-out bar, foo bar baz) returns foo baz (it can be more subtle, but we don't need subtlety here).
Put these together and $(filter-out $#,$(MAKECMDGOALS)) returns the list of targets specified on the command line other than "action", which might be "value1 value2".

Answer 2

Here is a generic working solution based on #Beta's
I'm using GNU Make 4.1 with SHELL=/bin/bash atop my Makefile, so YMMV!
This allows us to accept extra arguments (by doing nothing when we get a job that doesn't match, rather than throwing an error).
%:
#:
And this is a macro which gets the args for us:
args = `arg="$(filter-out $#,$(MAKECMDGOALS))" && echo $${arg:-${1}}`
Here is a job which might call this one:
test:
#echo $(call args,defaultstring)
The result would be:
$ make test
defaultstring
$ make test hi
hi
Note! You might be better off using a "Taskfile", which is a bash pattern that works similarly to make, only without the nuances of Maketools. See https://github.com/adriancooney/Taskfile

Answer 3

Much easier aproach. Consider a task:
provision:
ansible-playbook -vvvv \
-i .vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory/vagrant_ansible_inventory \
--private-key=.vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/private_key \
--start-at-task="$(AT)" \
-u vagrant playbook.yml
Now when I want to call it I just run something like:
AT="build assets" make provision
or just:
make provision in this case AT is an empty string

Answer 4

Few years later, want to suggest just for this: https://github.com/casey/just
action v1 v2=default:
#echo 'take action on {{v1}} and {{v2}}...'

Answer 5

You will be better of defining variables and calling your make instead of using parameters:
Makefile
action: ## My action helper
#echo $$VAR_NAME
Terminal
> VAR_NAME="Hello World" make action
Hello World

Answer 6

don't try to do this
$ make action value1 value2
instead create script:
#! /bin/sh
# rebuild if necessary
make
# do action with arguments
action "$#"
and do this:
$ ./buildthenaction.sh value1 value2
for more explanation why do this and caveats of makefile hackery read my answer to another very similar but seemingly not duplicate question: Passing arguments to "make run"