scary cool bash scripting inside a Makefile

Makefiles are both scary and wonderful. When both these adjectives are involved, it often makes for interesting hacking. This is likely the reason I use bash.

In any case, I digress, back to real work. I use Makefiles as a general purpose tool to launch any of a number of shell scripts which I use to maintain my code, and instead of actually having external shell scripts, I just build any necessary bash right into the Makefile.

One benefit of all this is that when you type “Make <target>”, the <target> can actually autocomplete which makes your shell experience that much more friendly.

In any case, let me show you the code in question. Please note the double $$ for shell execution and for variable referencing. The calls to rsync and sort make me pleased.

rsync -avz --include=*$(EXT) --exclude='*' --delete dist/ $(WWW)
# empty the file
echo -n '' > $(METADATA)
cd $(WWW); 
for i in *$(EXT); do 
b=$$(basename $$i $(EXT)); 
V=$$(echo -n $$(basename "`echo -n "$$b" | rev`" 
"`echo -n "$(NAME)-" | rev`") | rev); 
echo $(NAME) $$V $$i >> $(METADATA); 
done; 
sort -V -k 2 -o $(METADATA) $(METADATA)		# sort by version key

The full Makefile can be found inside of the bash-tutor tarball.

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March 31, 2010
265 words

• technical