How can I make a target “private” in GNU make for internal use only? OR: how to best enforce target-specific variable-values?

Question

I have some ancillary targets in a makefile that I want to restrict for internal or \"private\" use (only) inside the makefile. That is, I want to be able to specify these targ

Answer 1

You kind of can define private targets by starting their name with two hyphens.

--private-target:
    @echo private

public-target: --private-target
    @echo public

You can call make public-target but make --private-target will complain about an unknown option:

$ make public-target
private
public

$ make --private-target
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/make: unrecognized option `--private-target'

---

$ make --version
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i386-apple-darwin11.3.0