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POAre there good reasons not to exploit '#!/bin/make -f' at the top of a makefile to give an executable makefile?
 

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  1. POAre there good reasons not to exploit '#!/bin/make -f' at the top of a makefile to give an executable makefile?
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    <p>Mostly for my amusement, I created a <code>makefile</code> in my <code>$HOME/bin</code> directory called <code>rebuild.mk</code>, and made it executable, and the first lines of the file read:</p> <pre><code>#!/bin/make -f # # Comments on what the makefile is for ... all: ${SCRIPTS} ${LINKS} ... ... </code></pre> <p>I can now type:</p> <pre><code>rebuild.mk </code></pre> <p>and this causes <code>make</code> to execute.</p> <p>What are the reasons for not exploiting this on a permanent basis, other than this:</p> <ul> <li>The makefile is tied to a single directory, so it really isn't appropriate in my main <code>bin</code> directory.</li> </ul> <p>Has anyone ever seen the trick exploited before?</p> <hr> <p>Collecting some comments, and providing a bit more background information.</p> <ol> <li>Norman Ramsey reports that this technique is used in Debian; that is interesting to know. Thank you.</li> <li>I agree that typing 'make' is more idiomatic.</li> <li>However, the scenario (previously unstated) is that my $HOME/bin directory already has a cross-platform main makefile in it that is the primary maintenance tool for the 500+ commands in the directory.</li> <li>However, on one particular machine (only), I wanted to add a makefile for building a special set of tools. So, those tools get a special makefile, which I called <code>rebuild.mk</code> for this question (it has another name on my machine).</li> <li>I do get to save typing '<code>make -f rebuild.mk</code>' by using '<code>rebuild.mk</code>' instead.</li> <li>Fixing the position of the <code>make</code> utility is problematic across platforms.</li> <li>The <code>#!/usr/bin/env make -f</code> technique is likely to work, though I believe the official rules of engagement are that the line must be less than 32 characters and may only have one argument to the command.</li> <li>@dF comments that the technique might prevent you passing arguments to make. That is not a problem on my Solaris machine, at any rate. The three different versions of 'make' I tested (Sun, GNU, mine) all got the extra command line arguments that I type, including options ('-u' on my home-brew version) and targets 'someprogram' and macros CC='cc' WFLAGS=-v (to use a different compiler and cancel the GCC warning flags which the Sun compiler does not understand).</li> </ol> <h3>I would not advocate this as a general technique.</h3> <p>As stated, it was mostly for my amusement. I may keep it for this particular job; it is most unlikely that I'd use it in distributed work. And if I did, I'd supply and apply a '<code>fixin</code>' script to fix the pathname of the interpreter; indeed, I did that already on my machine. That script is a relic from the first edition of the Camel book ('Programming Perl' by Larry Wall).</p>
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