Is there a way to write "standard" comments in a Makefile to later feed them to a Doxygen-like program so as to output a nice (HTML or man for instance) documentation ? I'd like to have a clear overview of my main targets somewhere but nothing too fancy.
One nice touch is to provide a phony help target that prints a summary of targets and options. From the Linux kernel Makefile:
help:
@echo 'Cleaning targets:'
@echo ' clean - Remove most generated files but keep the config and'
@echo ' enough build support to build external modules'
@echo ' mrproper - Remove all generated files + config + various backup files'
@echo ' distclean - mrproper + remove editor backup and patch files'
@echo ''
@echo 'Configuration targets:'
@$(MAKE) -f $(srctree)/scripts/kconfig/Makefile help
@echo ''
It might be a bit of work to maintain the documentation this way, but I find it nicely separates what is intended for "users" versus what is intended for people maintaining the Makefile itself (inline comments).