Using Makefile to clean subdirectories

Question

Is it possible to perform a make clean from the parent directory which also recursively cleans all sub-directories without having to include a makefile in each sub-directory?

Answer 1

I agree that you could just have the rm command operate on subdirs. But something like the following allows recursive make using only a single makefile:

SUBDIRS = . src src1
SUBDIRSCLEAN=$(addsuffix clean,$(SUBDIRS))

clean: $(SUBDIRSCLEAN)

clean_curdir:
    rm -rfv *.o *~ core .depend .*.cmd *.ko *.mod.c

%clean: %
    $(MAKE) -C $< -f $(PWD)/Makefile clean_curdir