NAME

       make-first-existing-target - runs make on one of several targets

SYNOPSIS

       make-first-existing-target [-c cmd] target1 [target2 ...] -- [make-options]

DESCRIPTION

       The design of make(1) causes difficulty when you know that a Makefile probably has one of
       several standardized target names, and want build machinery to run exactly one of them,
       propagating any errors. make(1) will exit 2 if a target does not exist, but an existing
       target may also exit 2 due to some other failure. Makefiles cannot be reliably parsed to
       find targets by anything less Turing-complete than make, and make itself does not provide
       a way to enumerate the targets in a Makefile. It may not even be possible to enumerate the
       targets in a Makefile without executing part of it. (Proof of this is left as an exercise
       for the reader.)

       This program avoids the problems described above, by attempting to call each specified
       target in turn, until it observes make actually doing something for one of them.

OPTIONS

       -c cmd
           This can be used to specify the make command to run. Default is "make".

EXIT STATUS

       The exit status is 0 if at least one target existed and was successfully run, and nonzero
       otherwise.

AUTHOR

       Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>

LICENSE

       Same as GNU make.

SEE ALSO

       make(1)