Useful Makefile targets

Help

This target assumes all targets have comments describing its purpose. It greps the file for comments that start with ## and prints the command with its respective description (comment).

.PHONY: help
help: ## Display this help output.
	@grep -E '^[a-zA-Z_-]+:.*?## .*$$' $(MAKEFILE_LIST) | sort | awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":.*?## "}; {printf "\033[36m%-30s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$2}'

Here's an approach using awk which prints targets in groups:

.PHONY: help
help: ## Display this help.
    @awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":.*##"; printf "\nUsage:\n  make \033[36m<target>\033[0m\n"} /^[a-zA-Z_0-9-]+:.*?##/ { printf "  \033[36m%-15s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$2 } /^##@/ { printf "\n\033[1m%s\033[0m\n", substr($$0, 5) } ' $(MAKEFILE_LIST)

##@ Build

.PHONY: build
build: manifests generate fmt vet ## Build manager binary.
	go build -o bin/manager cmd/main.go

The output of this will look like:

Usage:
  make <target>

General
  help             Display this help.

Build
  build            Build manager binary.

scotchneat/useful-targets.md

Useful Makefile targets

Help