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linuxmakefile

make option to suppress output

I'm on Debian 12 writing a Makefile to simplify some tasks:

todo:
    su - user -c "/mypath/dothis"

Now I can see the standard output from that task if run with:

make todo

I've checked in man make and found -s silent: but this hide only the command, is there a way suppress output or this is the only way:

make todo >> /dev/null 2>&1
Solution

  • The simple way would be to make the recipe output to /dev/null:

    todo_quiet:
   @su - user -c "/mypath/dothis" > /dev/null 2>&1

    and then run make todo_quite

    You could also do a command line parameter as so:

    Q := $(if $(V),,@)
Q_SUFFIX := $(if $(V),,> /dev/null 2>&1)

.PHONY: todo

todo:
   $(Q)su - user -c "/mypath/dothis" $(Q_SUFFIX)

    Where you would run make todo to compile quietly, and make todo V=1 to do it verbosely. If you want to suppress all output from any make recipe, you would have to pipe make's output to /dev/null...