Controlling verbosity of make

Question

I\'m using a makefile to compile a program made of many .c files, and any time make is invoked it only compiles those files modified after the last run

Answer 1

Since I can't comment on the AT = $(AT_$(V)) suggestion, note that Automake does provide a standard macro that does the same thing as AT, which is called AM_V_at.

You will also find that it has another very useful AM_V_GEN variable, that resolves either to nothing or to @echo " GEN " $@;, depending on the verbosity.

This allows you to code something like this:

grldr.mbr: mbrstart
    $(AM_V_GEN)
    $(AM_V_at)-rm -f grldr.mbr
    $(AM_V_at)cat mbrstart > grldr.mbr

The output of which will be either (verbosity disabled):

  GEN    grldr.mbr

or (verbosity enabled):

rm -f grldr.mbr
cat mbrstart > grldr.mbr

Pretty convenient, and this removes the need to define your own macros.