Provided by: bmake_20200710-16_amd64 
NAME
bmake — maintain program dependencies
SYNOPSIS
bmake [-BeikNnqrstWwX] [-C directory] [-D variable] [-d flags] [-f makefile] [-I directory] [-J private]
[-j max_jobs] [-m directory] [-T file] [-V variable] [-v variable] [variable=value] [target ...]
DESCRIPTION
bmake is a program designed to simplify the maintenance of other programs. Its input is a list of
specifications as to the files upon which programs and other files depend. If no -f makefile makefile
option is given, bmake will try to open ‘makefile’ then ‘Makefile’ in order to find the specifications.
If the file ‘.depend’ exists, it is read (see mkdep(1)).
This manual page is intended as a reference document only. For a more thorough description of bmake and
makefiles, please refer to PMake - A Tutorial.
bmake will prepend the contents of the MAKEFLAGS environment variable to the command line arguments
before parsing them.
The options are as follows:
-B Try to be backwards compatible by executing a single shell per command and by executing the
commands to make the sources of a dependency line in sequence.
-C directory
Change to directory before reading the makefiles or doing anything else. If multiple -C options
are specified, each is interpreted relative to the previous one: -C / -C etc is equivalent to -C
/etc.
-D variable
Define variable to be 1, in the global context.
-d [-]flags
Turn on debugging, and specify which portions of bmake are to print debugging information.
Unless the flags are preceded by ‘-’ they are added to the MAKEFLAGS environment variable and
will be processed by any child make processes. By default, debugging information is printed to
standard error, but this can be changed using the F debugging flag. The debugging output is
always unbuffered; in addition, if debugging is enabled but debugging output is not directed to
standard output, then the standard output is line buffered. Flags is one or more of the
following:
A Print all possible debugging information; equivalent to specifying all of the debugging
flags.
a Print debugging information about archive searching and caching.
C Print debugging information about current working directory.
c Print debugging information about conditional evaluation.
d Print debugging information about directory searching and caching.
e Print debugging information about failed commands and targets.
F[+]filename
Specify where debugging output is written. This must be the last flag, because it
consumes the remainder of the argument. If the character immediately after the ‘F’ flag
is ‘+’, then the file will be opened in append mode; otherwise the file will be
overwritten. If the file name is ‘stdout’ or ‘stderr’ then debugging output will be
written to the standard output or standard error output file descriptors respectively
(and the ‘+’ option has no effect). Otherwise, the output will be written to the named
file. If the file name ends ‘.%d’ then the ‘%d’ is replaced by the pid.
f Print debugging information about loop evaluation.
g1 Print the input graph before making anything.
g2 Print the input graph after making everything, or before exiting on error.
g3 Print the input graph before exiting on error.
j Print debugging information about running multiple shells.
l Print commands in Makefiles regardless of whether or not they are prefixed by ‘@’ or
other "quiet" flags. Also known as "loud" behavior.
M Print debugging information about "meta" mode decisions about targets.
m Print debugging information about making targets, including modification dates.
n Don't delete the temporary command scripts created when running commands. These
temporary scripts are created in the directory referred to by the TMPDIR environment
variable, or in /tmp if TMPDIR is unset or set to the empty string. The temporary
scripts are created by mkstemp(3), and have names of the form makeXXXXXX. NOTE: This can
create many files in TMPDIR or /tmp, so use with care.
p Print debugging information about makefile parsing.
s Print debugging information about suffix-transformation rules.
t Print debugging information about target list maintenance.
V Force the -V option to print raw values of variables, overriding the default behavior set
via .MAKE.EXPAND_VARIABLES.
v Print debugging information about variable assignment.
x Run shell commands with -x so the actual commands are printed as they are executed.
-e Specify that environment variables override macro assignments within makefiles.
-f makefile
Specify a makefile to read instead of the default ‘makefile’. If makefile is ‘-’, standard input
is read. Multiple makefiles may be specified, and are read in the order specified.
-I directory
Specify a directory in which to search for makefiles and included makefiles. The system makefile
directory (or directories, see the -m option) is automatically included as part of this list.
-i Ignore non-zero exit of shell commands in the makefile. Equivalent to specifying ‘-’ before each
command line in the makefile.
-J private
This option should not be specified by the user.
When the j option is in use in a recursive build, this option is passed by a make to child makes
to allow all the make processes in the build to cooperate to avoid overloading the system.
-j max_jobs
Specify the maximum number of jobs that bmake may have running at any one time. The value is
saved in .MAKE.JOBS. Turns compatibility mode off, unless the B flag is also specified. When
compatibility mode is off, all commands associated with a target are executed in a single shell
invocation as opposed to the traditional one shell invocation per line. This can break
traditional scripts which change directories on each command invocation and then expect to start
with a fresh environment on the next line. It is more efficient to correct the scripts rather
than turn backwards compatibility on.
-k Continue processing after errors are encountered, but only on those targets that do not depend on
the target whose creation caused the error.
-m directory
Specify a directory in which to search for sys.mk and makefiles included via the <file>-style
include statement. The -m option can be used multiple times to form a search path. This path
will override the default system include path: /usr/share/mk. Furthermore the system include
path will be appended to the search path used for "file"-style include statements (see the -I
option).
If a file or directory name in the -m argument (or the MAKESYSPATH environment variable) starts
with the string ".../" then bmake will search for the specified file or directory named in the
remaining part of the argument string. The search starts with the current directory of the
Makefile and then works upward towards the root of the file system. If the search is successful,
then the resulting directory replaces the ".../" specification in the -m argument. If used, this
feature allows bmake to easily search in the current source tree for customized sys.mk files
(e.g., by using ".../mk/sys.mk" as an argument).
-n Display the commands that would have been executed, but do not actually execute them unless the
target depends on the .MAKE special source (see below).
-N Display the commands which would have been executed, but do not actually execute any of them;
useful for debugging top-level makefiles without descending into subdirectories.
-q Do not execute any commands, but exit 0 if the specified targets are up-to-date and 1, otherwise.
-r Do not use the built-in rules specified in the system makefile.
-s Do not echo any commands as they are executed. Equivalent to specifying ‘@’ before each command
line in the makefile.
-T tracefile
When used with the -j flag, append a trace record to tracefile for each job started and
completed.
-t Rather than re-building a target as specified in the makefile, create it or update its
modification time to make it appear up-to-date.
-V variable
Print the value of variable. Do not build any targets. Multiple instances of this option may be
specified; the variables will be printed one per line, with a blank line for each null or
undefined variable. The value printed is extracted from the global context after all makefiles
have been read. By default, the raw variable contents (which may include additional unexpanded
variable references) are shown. If variable contains a ‘$’ then the value will be recursively
expanded to its complete resultant text before printing. The expanded value will also be printed
if .MAKE.EXPAND_VARIABLES is set to true and the -dV option has not been used to override it.
Note that loop-local and target-local variables, as well as values taken temporarily by global
variables during makefile processing, are not accessible via this option. The -dv debug mode can
be used to see these at the cost of generating substantial extraneous output.
-v variable
Like -V but the variable is always expanded to its complete value.
-W Treat any warnings during makefile parsing as errors.
-w Print entering and leaving directory messages, pre and post processing.
-X Don't export variables passed on the command line to the environment individually. Variables
passed on the command line are still exported via the MAKEFLAGS environment variable. This
option may be useful on systems which have a small limit on the size of command arguments.
variable=value
Set the value of the variable variable to value. Normally, all values passed on the command line
are also exported to sub-makes in the environment. The -X flag disables this behavior. Variable
assignments should follow options for POSIX compatibility but no ordering is enforced.
There are seven different types of lines in a makefile: file dependency specifications, shell commands,
variable assignments, include statements, conditional directives, for loops, and comments.
In general, lines may be continued from one line to the next by ending them with a backslash (‘\’). The
trailing newline character and initial whitespace on the following line are compressed into a single
space.
FILE DEPENDENCY SPECIFICATIONS
Dependency lines consist of one or more targets, an operator, and zero or more sources. This creates a
relationship where the targets “depend” on the sources and are usually created from them. The exact
relationship between the target and the source is determined by the operator that separates them. The
three operators are as follows:
: A target is considered out-of-date if its modification time is less than those of any of its
sources. Sources for a target accumulate over dependency lines when this operator is used. The
target is removed if bmake is interrupted.
! Targets are always re-created, but not until all sources have been examined and re-created as
necessary. Sources for a target accumulate over dependency lines when this operator is used. The
target is removed if bmake is interrupted.
:: If no sources are specified, the target is always re-created. Otherwise, a target is considered
out-of-date if any of its sources has been modified more recently than the target. Sources for a
target do not accumulate over dependency lines when this operator is used. The target will not be
removed if bmake is interrupted.
Targets and sources may contain the shell wildcard values ‘?’, ‘*’, ‘[]’, and ‘{}’. The values ‘?’, ‘*’,
and ‘[]’ may only be used as part of the final component of the target or source, and must be used to
describe existing files. The value ‘{}’ need not necessarily be used to describe existing files.
Expansion is in directory order, not alphabetically as done in the shell.
SHELL COMMANDS
Each target may have associated with it one or more lines of shell commands, normally used to create the
target. Each of the lines in this script must be preceded by a tab. (For historical reasons, spaces are
not accepted.) While targets can appear in many dependency lines if desired, by default only one of
these rules may be followed by a creation script. If the ‘::’ operator is used, however, all rules may
include scripts and the scripts are executed in the order found.
Each line is treated as a separate shell command, unless the end of line is escaped with a backslash
(‘\’) in which case that line and the next are combined. If the first characters of the command are any
combination of ‘@’, ‘+’, or ‘-’, the command is treated specially. A ‘@’ causes the command not to be
echoed before it is executed. A ‘+’ causes the command to be executed even when -n is given. This is
similar to the effect of the .MAKE special source, except that the effect can be limited to a single line
of a script. A ‘-’ in compatibility mode causes any non-zero exit status of the command line to be
ignored.
When bmake is run in jobs mode with -j max_jobs, the entire script for the target is fed to a single
instance of the shell. In compatibility (non-jobs) mode, each command is run in a separate process. If
the command contains any shell meta characters (‘#=|^(){};&<>*?[]:$`\\n’) it will be passed to the shell;
otherwise bmake will attempt direct execution. If a line starts with ‘-’ and the shell has ErrCtl
enabled then failure of the command line will be ignored as in compatibility mode. Otherwise ‘-’ affects
the entire job; the script will stop at the first command line that fails, but the target will not be
deemed to have failed.
Makefiles should be written so that the mode of bmake operation does not change their behavior. For
example, any command which needs to use “cd” or “chdir” without potentially changing the directory for
subsequent commands should be put in parentheses so it executes in a subshell. To force the use of one
shell, escape the line breaks so as to make the whole script one command. For example:
avoid-chdir-side-effects:
@echo Building $@ in `pwd`
@(cd ${.CURDIR} && ${MAKE} $@)
@echo Back in `pwd`
ensure-one-shell-regardless-of-mode:
@echo Building $@ in `pwd`; \
(cd ${.CURDIR} && ${MAKE} $@); \
echo Back in `pwd`
Since bmake will chdir(2) to ‘.OBJDIR’ before executing any targets, each child process starts with that
as its current working directory.
VARIABLE ASSIGNMENTS
Variables in make are much like variables in the shell, and, by tradition, consist of all upper-case
letters.
Variable assignment modifiers
The five operators that can be used to assign values to variables are as follows:
= Assign the value to the variable. Any previous value is overridden.
+= Append the value to the current value of the variable.
?= Assign the value to the variable if it is not already defined.
:= Assign with expansion, i.e. expand the value before assigning it to the variable. Normally,
expansion is not done until the variable is referenced. NOTE: References to undefined variables
are not expanded. This can cause problems when variable modifiers are used.
!= Expand the value and pass it to the shell for execution and assign the result to the variable.
Any newlines in the result are replaced with spaces.
Any white-space before the assigned value is removed; if the value is being appended, a single space is
inserted between the previous contents of the variable and the appended value.
Variables are expanded by surrounding the variable name with either curly braces (‘{}’) or parentheses
(‘()’) and preceding it with a dollar sign (‘$’). If the variable name contains only a single letter,
the surrounding braces or parentheses are not required. This shorter form is not recommended.
If the variable name contains a dollar, then the name itself is expanded first. This allows almost
arbitrary variable names, however names containing dollar, braces, parenthesis, or whitespace are really
best avoided!
If the result of expanding a variable contains a dollar sign (‘$’) the string is expanded again.
Variable substitution occurs at three distinct times, depending on where the variable is being used.
1. Variables in dependency lines are expanded as the line is read.
2. Variables in shell commands are expanded when the shell command is executed.
3. “.for” loop index variables are expanded on each loop iteration. Note that other variables are not
expanded inside loops so the following example code:
.for i in 1 2 3
a+= ${i}
j= ${i}
b+= ${j}
.endfor
all:
@echo ${a}
@echo ${b}
will print:
1 2 3
3 3 3
Because while ${a} contains “1 2 3” after the loop is executed, ${b} contains “${j} ${j} ${j}” which
expands to “3 3 3” since after the loop completes ${j} contains “3”.
Variable classes
The four different classes of variables (in order of increasing precedence) are:
Environment variables
Variables defined as part of bmake's environment.
Global variables
Variables defined in the makefile or in included makefiles.
Command line variables
Variables defined as part of the command line.
Local variables
Variables that are defined specific to a certain target.
Local variables are all built in and their values vary magically from target to target. It is not
currently possible to define new local variables. The seven local variables are as follows:
.ALLSRC The list of all sources for this target; also known as ‘>’.
.ARCHIVE The name of the archive file; also known as ‘!’.
.IMPSRC In suffix-transformation rules, the name/path of the source from which the target is to
be transformed (the “implied” source); also known as ‘<’. It is not defined in explicit
rules.
.MEMBER The name of the archive member; also known as ‘%’.
.OODATE The list of sources for this target that were deemed out-of-date; also known as ‘?’.
.PREFIX The file prefix of the target, containing only the file portion, no suffix or preceding
directory components; also known as ‘*’. The suffix must be one of the known suffixes
declared with .SUFFIXES or it will not be recognized.
.TARGET The name of the target; also known as ‘@’. For compatibility with other makes this is an
alias for .ARCHIVE in archive member rules.
The shorter forms (‘>’, ‘!’, ‘<’, ‘%’, ‘?’, ‘*’, and ‘@’) are permitted for backward compatibility with
historical makefiles and legacy POSIX make and are not recommended.
Variants of these variables with the punctuation followed immediately by ‘D’ or ‘F’, e.g. ‘$(@D)’, are
legacy forms equivalent to using the ‘:H’ and ‘:T’ modifiers. These forms are accepted for compatibility
with AT&T System V UNIX makefiles and POSIX but are not recommended.
Four of the local variables may be used in sources on dependency lines because they expand to the proper
value for each target on the line. These variables are ‘.TARGET’, ‘.PREFIX’, ‘.ARCHIVE’, and ‘.MEMBER’.
Additional built-in variables
In addition, bmake sets or knows about the following variables:
$ A single dollar sign ‘$’, i.e. ‘$$’ expands to a single dollar sign.
.ALLTARGETS The list of all targets encountered in the Makefile. If evaluated during Makefile
parsing, lists only those targets encountered thus far.
.CURDIR A path to the directory where bmake was executed. Refer to the description of ‘PWD’ for
more details.
.INCLUDEDFROMDIR
The directory of the file this Makefile was included from.
.INCLUDEDFROMFILE
The filename of the file this Makefile was included from.
MAKE The name that bmake was executed with (argv[0]). For compatibility bmake also sets .MAKE
with the same value. The preferred variable to use is the environment variable MAKE
because it is more compatible with other versions of bmake and cannot be confused with
the special target with the same name.
.MAKE.DEPENDFILE
Names the makefile (default ‘.depend’) from which generated dependencies are read.
.MAKE.EXPAND_VARIABLES
A boolean that controls the default behavior of the -V option. If true, variable values
printed with -V are fully expanded; if false, the raw variable contents (which may
include additional unexpanded variable references) are shown.
.MAKE.EXPORTED The list of variables exported by bmake.
.MAKE.JOBS The argument to the -j option.
.MAKE.JOB.PREFIX
If bmake is run with j then output for each target is prefixed with a token ‘--- target
---’ the first part of which can be controlled via .MAKE.JOB.PREFIX. If .MAKE.JOB.PREFIX
is empty, no token is printed.
For example: .MAKE.JOB.PREFIX=${.newline}---${.MAKE:T}[${.MAKE.PID}] would produce tokens
like ‘---make[1234] target ---’ making it easier to track the degree of parallelism being
achieved.
MAKEFLAGS The environment variable ‘MAKEFLAGS’ may contain anything that may be specified on
bmake's command line. Anything specified on bmake's command line is appended to the
‘MAKEFLAGS’ variable which is then entered into the environment for all programs which
bmake executes.
.MAKE.LEVEL The recursion depth of bmake. The initial instance of bmake will be 0, and an
incremented value is put into the environment to be seen by the next generation. This
allows tests like: .if ${.MAKE.LEVEL} == 0 to protect things which should only be
evaluated in the initial instance of bmake.
.MAKE.MAKEFILE_PREFERENCE
The ordered list of makefile names (default ‘makefile’, ‘Makefile’) that bmake will look
for.
.MAKE.MAKEFILES
The list of makefiles read by bmake, which is useful for tracking dependencies. Each
makefile is recorded only once, regardless of the number of times read.
.MAKE.MODE Processed after reading all makefiles. Can affect the mode that bmake runs in. It can
contain a number of keywords:
compat Like -B, puts bmake into "compat" mode.
meta Puts bmake into "meta" mode, where meta files are created for each
target to capture the command run, the output generated and if
filemon(4) is available, the system calls which are of interest to
bmake. The captured output can be very useful when diagnosing
errors.
curdirOk= bf Normally bmake will not create .meta files in ‘.CURDIR’. This can
be overridden by setting bf to a value which represents True.
missing-meta= bf If bf is True, then a missing .meta file makes the target out-of-
date.
missing-filemon= bf If bf is True, then missing filemon data makes the target out-of-
date.
nofilemon Do not use filemon(4).
env For debugging, it can be useful to include the environment in the
.meta file.
verbose If in "meta" mode, print a clue about the target being built. This
is useful if the build is otherwise running silently. The message
printed the value of: .MAKE.META.PREFIX.
ignore-cmd Some makefiles have commands which are simply not stable. This
keyword causes them to be ignored for determining whether a target
is out of date in "meta" mode. See also .NOMETA_CMP.
silent= bf If bf is True, when a .meta file is created, mark the target
.SILENT.
.MAKE.META.BAILIWICK
In "meta" mode, provides a list of prefixes which match the directories controlled by
bmake. If a file that was generated outside of .OBJDIR but within said bailiwick is
missing, the current target is considered out-of-date.
.MAKE.META.CREATED
In "meta" mode, this variable contains a list of all the meta files updated. If not
empty, it can be used to trigger processing of .MAKE.META.FILES.
.MAKE.META.FILES
In "meta" mode, this variable contains a list of all the meta files used (updated or
not). This list can be used to process the meta files to extract dependency information.
.MAKE.META.IGNORE_PATHS
Provides a list of path prefixes that should be ignored; because the contents are
expected to change over time. The default list includes: ‘/dev /etc /proc /tmp /var/run
/var/tmp’
.MAKE.META.IGNORE_PATTERNS
Provides a list of patterns to match against pathnames. Ignore any that match.
.MAKE.META.IGNORE_FILTER
Provides a list of variable modifiers to apply to each pathname. Ignore if the expansion
is an empty string.
.MAKE.META.PREFIX
Defines the message printed for each meta file updated in "meta verbose" mode. The
default value is:
Building ${.TARGET:H:tA}/${.TARGET:T}
.MAKEOVERRIDES This variable is used to record the names of variables assigned to on the command line,
so that they may be exported as part of ‘MAKEFLAGS’. This behavior can be disabled by
assigning an empty value to ‘.MAKEOVERRIDES’ within a makefile. Extra variables can be
exported from a makefile by appending their names to ‘.MAKEOVERRIDES’. ‘MAKEFLAGS’ is
re-exported whenever ‘.MAKEOVERRIDES’ is modified.
.MAKE.PATH_FILEMON
If bmake was built with filemon(4) support, this is set to the path of the device node.
This allows makefiles to test for this support.
.MAKE.PID The process-id of bmake.
.MAKE.PPID The parent process-id of bmake.
.MAKE.SAVE_DOLLARS
value should be a boolean that controls whether ‘$$’ are preserved when doing ‘:=’
assignments. The default is false, for backwards compatibility. Set to true for
compatability with other makes. If set to false, ‘$$’ becomes ‘$’ per normal evaluation
rules.
MAKE_PRINT_VAR_ON_ERROR
When bmake stops due to an error, it sets ‘.ERROR_TARGET’ to the name of the target that
failed, ‘.ERROR_CMD’ to the commands of the failed target, and in "meta" mode, it also
sets ‘.ERROR_CWD’ to the getcwd(3), and ‘.ERROR_META_FILE’ to the path of the meta file
(if any) describing the failed target. It then prints its name and the value of
‘.CURDIR’ as well as the value of any variables named in ‘MAKE_PRINT_VAR_ON_ERROR’.
.newline This variable is simply assigned a newline character as its value. This allows
expansions using the :@ modifier to put a newline between iterations of the loop rather
than a space. For example, the printing of ‘MAKE_PRINT_VAR_ON_ERROR’ could be done as
${MAKE_PRINT_VAR_ON_ERROR:@v@$v='${$v}'${.newline}@}.
.OBJDIR A path to the directory where the targets are built. Its value is determined by trying
to chdir(2) to the following directories in order and using the first match:
1. ${MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX}${.CURDIR}
(Only if ‘MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX’ is set in the environment or on the command line.)
2. ${MAKEOBJDIR}
(Only if ‘MAKEOBJDIR’ is set in the environment or on the command line.)
3. ${.CURDIR}/obj.${MACHINE}
4. ${.CURDIR}/obj
5. /usr/obj/${.CURDIR}
6. ${.CURDIR}
Variable expansion is performed on the value before it's used, so expressions such as
${.CURDIR:S,^/usr/src,/var/obj,}
may be used. This is especially useful with ‘MAKEOBJDIR’.
‘.OBJDIR’ may be modified in the makefile via the special target ‘.OBJDIR’. In all
cases, bmake will chdir(2) to the specified directory if it exists, and set ‘.OBJDIR’ and
‘PWD’ to that directory before executing any targets.
.PARSEDIR A path to the directory of the current ‘Makefile’ being parsed.
.PARSEFILE The basename of the current ‘Makefile’ being parsed. This variable and ‘.PARSEDIR’ are
both set only while the ‘Makefiles’ are being parsed. If you want to retain their
current values, assign them to a variable using assignment with expansion: (‘:=’).
.PATH A variable that represents the list of directories that bmake will search for files. The
search list should be updated using the target ‘.PATH’ rather than the variable.
PWD Alternate path to the current directory. bmake normally sets ‘.CURDIR’ to the canonical
path given by getcwd(3). However, if the environment variable ‘PWD’ is set and gives a
path to the current directory, then bmake sets ‘.CURDIR’ to the value of ‘PWD’ instead.
This behavior is disabled if ‘MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX’ is set or ‘MAKEOBJDIR’ contains a
variable transform. ‘PWD’ is set to the value of ‘.OBJDIR’ for all programs which bmake
executes.
.TARGETS The list of targets explicitly specified on the command line, if any.
VPATH Colon-separated (“:”) lists of directories that bmake will search for files. The
variable is supported for compatibility with old make programs only, use ‘.PATH’ instead.
Variable modifiers
Variable expansion may be modified to select or modify each word of the variable (where a “word” is
white-space delimited sequence of characters). The general format of a variable expansion is as follows:
${variable[:modifier[:...]]}
Each modifier begins with a colon, which may be escaped with a backslash (‘\’).
A set of modifiers can be specified via a variable, as follows:
modifier_variable=modifier[:...]
${variable:${modifier_variable}[:...]}
In this case the first modifier in the modifier_variable does not start with a colon, since that must
appear in the referencing variable. If any of the modifiers in the modifier_variable contain a dollar
sign (‘$’), these must be doubled to avoid early expansion.
The supported modifiers are:
:E Replaces each word in the variable with its suffix.
:H Replaces each word in the variable with everything but the last component.
:Mpattern
Select only those words that match pattern. The standard shell wildcard characters (‘*’, ‘?’, and
‘[]’) may be used. The wildcard characters may be escaped with a backslash (‘\’). As a consequence
of the way values are split into words, matched, and then joined, a construct like
${VAR:M*}
will normalize the inter-word spacing, removing all leading and trailing space, and converting
multiple consecutive spaces to single spaces.
:Npattern
This is identical to ‘:M’, but selects all words which do not match pattern.
:O Order every word in variable alphabetically.
:Or Order every word in variable in reverse alphabetical order.
:Ox Randomize words in variable. The results will be different each time you are referring to the
modified variable; use the assignment with expansion (‘:=’) to prevent such behavior. For example,
LIST= uno due tre quattro
RANDOM_LIST= ${LIST:Ox}
STATIC_RANDOM_LIST:= ${LIST:Ox}
all:
@echo "${RANDOM_LIST}"
@echo "${RANDOM_LIST}"
@echo "${STATIC_RANDOM_LIST}"
@echo "${STATIC_RANDOM_LIST}"
may produce output similar to:
quattro due tre uno
tre due quattro uno
due uno quattro tre
due uno quattro tre
:Q Quotes every shell meta-character in the variable, so that it can be passed safely to the shell.
:q Quotes every shell meta-character in the variable, and also doubles ‘$’ characters so that it can be
passed safely through recursive invocations of bmake. This is equivalent to: ‘:S/\$/&&/g:Q’.
:R Replaces each word in the variable with everything but its suffix.
:range[=count]
The value is an integer sequence representing the words of the original value, or the supplied
count.
:gmtime[=utc]
The value is a format string for strftime(3), using gmtime(3). If a utc value is not provided or is
0, the current time is used.
:hash
Compute a 32-bit hash of the value and encode it as hex digits.
:localtime[=utc]
The value is a format string for strftime(3), using localtime(3). If a utc value is not provided or
is 0, the current time is used.
:tA Attempt to convert variable to an absolute path using realpath(3), if that fails, the value is
unchanged.
:tl Converts variable to lower-case letters.
:tsc
Words in the variable are normally separated by a space on expansion. This modifier sets the
separator to the character c. If c is omitted, then no separator is used. The common escapes
(including octal numeric codes), work as expected.
:tu Converts variable to upper-case letters.
:tW Causes the value to be treated as a single word (possibly containing embedded white space). See
also ‘:[*]’.
:tw Causes the value to be treated as a sequence of words delimited by white space. See also ‘:[@]’.
:S/old_string/new_string/[1gW]
Modify the first occurrence of old_string in the variable's value, replacing it with new_string. If
a ‘g’ is appended to the last slash of the pattern, all occurrences in each word are replaced. If a
‘1’ is appended to the last slash of the pattern, only the first word is affected. If a ‘W’ is
appended to the last slash of the pattern, then the value is treated as a single word (possibly
containing embedded white space). If old_string begins with a caret (‘^’), old_string is anchored
at the beginning of each word. If old_string ends with a dollar sign (‘$’), it is anchored at the
end of each word. Inside new_string, an ampersand (‘&’) is replaced by old_string (without any ‘^’
or ‘$’). Any character may be used as a delimiter for the parts of the modifier string. The
anchoring, ampersand and delimiter characters may be escaped with a backslash (‘\’).
Variable expansion occurs in the normal fashion inside both old_string and new_string with the
single exception that a backslash is used to prevent the expansion of a dollar sign (‘$’), not a
preceding dollar sign as is usual.
:C/pattern/replacement/[1gW]
The :C modifier is just like the :S modifier except that the old and new strings, instead of being
simple strings, are an extended regular expression (see regex(3)) string pattern and an ed(1)-style
string replacement. Normally, the first occurrence of the pattern pattern in each word of the value
is substituted with replacement. The ‘1’ modifier causes the substitution to apply to at most one
word; the ‘g’ modifier causes the substitution to apply to as many instances of the search pattern
pattern as occur in the word or words it is found in; the ‘W’ modifier causes the value to be
treated as a single word (possibly containing embedded white space). Note that ‘1’ and ‘g’ are
orthogonal; the former specifies whether multiple words are potentially affected, the latter whether
multiple substitutions can potentially occur within each affected word.
As for the :S modifier, the pattern and replacement are subjected to variable expansion before being
parsed as regular expressions.
:T Replaces each word in the variable with its last component.
:u Remove adjacent duplicate words (like uniq(1)).
:?true_string:false_string
If the variable name (not its value), when parsed as a .if conditional expression, evaluates to
true, return as its value the true_string, otherwise return the false_string. Since the variable
name is used as the expression, :? must be the first modifier after the variable name itself - which
will, of course, usually contain variable expansions. A common error is trying to use expressions
like
${NUMBERS:M42:?match:no}
which actually tests defined(NUMBERS), to determine is any words match "42" you need to use
something like:
${"${NUMBERS:M42}" != "":?match:no}.
:old_string=new_string
This is the AT&T System V UNIX style variable substitution. It must be the last modifier specified.
If old_string or new_string do not contain the pattern matching character % then it is assumed that
they are anchored at the end of each word, so only suffixes or entire words may be replaced.
Otherwise % is the substring of old_string to be replaced in new_string. If only old_string
contains the pattern matching character %, and old_string matches, then the result is the
new_string. If only the new_string contains the pattern matching character %, then it is not
treated specially and it is printed as a literal % on match. If there is more than one pattern
matching character (%) in either the new_string or old_string, only the first instance is treated
specially (as the pattern character); all subsequent instances are treated as regular characters
Variable expansion occurs in the normal fashion inside both old_string and new_string with the
single exception that a backslash is used to prevent the expansion of a dollar sign (‘$’), not a
preceding dollar sign as is usual.
:@temp@string@
This is the loop expansion mechanism from the OSF Development Environment (ODE) make. Unlike .for
loops expansion occurs at the time of reference. Assign temp to each word in the variable and
evaluate string. The ODE convention is that temp should start and end with a period. For example.
${LINKS:@.LINK.@${LN} ${TARGET} ${.LINK.}@}
However a single character variable is often more readable:
${MAKE_PRINT_VAR_ON_ERROR:@v@$v='${$v}'${.newline}@}
:_[=var]
Save the current variable value in ‘$_’ or the named var for later reference. Example usage:
M_cmpv.units = 1 1000 1000000
M_cmpv = S,., ,g:_:range:@i@+ $${_:[-$$i]} \
\* $${M_cmpv.units:[$$i]}@:S,^,expr 0 ,1:sh
.if ${VERSION:${M_cmpv}} < ${3.1.12:L:${M_cmpv}}
Here ‘$_’ is used to save the result of the ‘:S’ modifier which is later referenced using the index
values from ‘:range’.
:Unewval
If the variable is undefined newval is the value. If the variable is defined, the existing value is
returned. This is another ODE make feature. It is handy for setting per-target CFLAGS for
instance:
${_${.TARGET:T}_CFLAGS:U${DEF_CFLAGS}}
If a value is only required if the variable is undefined, use:
${VAR:D:Unewval}
:Dnewval
If the variable is defined newval is the value.
:L The name of the variable is the value.
:P The path of the node which has the same name as the variable is the value. If no such node exists
or its path is null, then the name of the variable is used. In order for this modifier to work, the
name (node) must at least have appeared on the rhs of a dependency.
:!cmd!
The output of running cmd is the value.
:sh If the variable is non-empty it is run as a command and the output becomes the new value.
::=str
The variable is assigned the value str after substitution. This modifier and its variations are
useful in obscure situations such as wanting to set a variable when shell commands are being parsed.
These assignment modifiers always expand to nothing, so if appearing in a rule line by themselves
should be preceded with something to keep bmake happy.
The ‘::’ helps avoid false matches with the AT&T System V UNIX style := modifier and since
substitution always occurs the ::= form is vaguely appropriate.
::?=str
As for ::= but only if the variable does not already have a value.
::+=str
Append str to the variable.
::!=cmd
Assign the output of cmd to the variable.
:[range]
Selects one or more words from the value, or performs other operations related to the way in which
the value is divided into words.
Ordinarily, a value is treated as a sequence of words delimited by white space. Some modifiers
suppress this behavior, causing a value to be treated as a single word (possibly containing embedded
white space). An empty value, or a value that consists entirely of white-space, is treated as a
single word. For the purposes of the ‘:[]’ modifier, the words are indexed both forwards using
positive integers (where index 1 represents the first word), and backwards using negative integers
(where index -1 represents the last word).
The range is subjected to variable expansion, and the expanded result is then interpreted as
follows:
index Selects a single word from the value.
start..end
Selects all words from start to end, inclusive. For example, ‘:[2..-1]’ selects all words
from the second word to the last word. If start is greater than end, then the words are
output in reverse order. For example, ‘:[-1..1]’ selects all the words from last to first.
If the list is already ordered, then this effectively reverses the list, but it is more
efficient to use ‘:Or’ instead of ‘:O:[-1..1]’.
* Causes subsequent modifiers to treat the value as a single word (possibly containing embedded
white space). Analogous to the effect of "$*" in Bourne shell.
0 Means the same as ‘:[*]’.
@ Causes subsequent modifiers to treat the value as a sequence of words delimited by white
space. Analogous to the effect of "$@" in Bourne shell.
# Returns the number of words in the value.
INCLUDE STATEMENTS, CONDITIONALS AND FOR LOOPS
Makefile inclusion, conditional structures and for loops reminiscent of the C programming language are
provided in bmake. All such structures are identified by a line beginning with a single dot (‘.’)
character. Files are included with either .include <file> or .include "file". Variables between the
angle brackets or double quotes are expanded to form the file name. If angle brackets are used, the
included makefile is expected to be in the system makefile directory. If double quotes are used, the
including makefile's directory and any directories specified using the -I option are searched before the
system makefile directory. For compatibility with other versions of bmake ‘include file ...’ is also
accepted.
If the include statement is written as .-include or as .sinclude then errors locating and/or opening
include files are ignored.
If the include statement is written as .dinclude not only are errors locating and/or opening include
files ignored, but stale dependencies within the included file will be ignored just like
.MAKE.DEPENDFILE.
Conditional expressions are also preceded by a single dot as the first character of a line. The possible
conditionals are as follows:
.error message
The message is printed along with the name of the makefile and line number, then bmake will exit.
.export variable ...
Export the specified global variable. If no variable list is provided, all globals are exported
except for internal variables (those that start with ‘.’). This is not affected by the -X flag,
so should be used with caution. For compatibility with other bmake programs ‘export
variable=value’ is also accepted.
Appending a variable name to .MAKE.EXPORTED is equivalent to exporting a variable.
.export-env variable ...
The same as ‘.export’, except that the variable is not appended to .MAKE.EXPORTED. This allows
exporting a value to the environment which is different from that used by bmake internally.
.export-literal variable ...
The same as ‘.export-env’, except that variables in the value are not expanded.
.info message
The message is printed along with the name of the makefile and line number.
.undef variable
Un-define the specified global variable. Only global variables may be un-defined.
.unexport variable ...
The opposite of ‘.export’. The specified global variable will be removed from .MAKE.EXPORTED.
If no variable list is provided, all globals are unexported, and .MAKE.EXPORTED deleted.
.unexport-env
Unexport all globals previously exported and clear the environment inherited from the parent.
This operation will cause a memory leak of the original environment, so should be used sparingly.
Testing for .MAKE.LEVEL being 0, would make sense. Also note that any variables which originated
in the parent environment should be explicitly preserved if desired. For example:
.if ${.MAKE.LEVEL} == 0
PATH := ${PATH}
.unexport-env
.export PATH
.endif
Would result in an environment containing only ‘PATH’, which is the minimal useful environment.
Actually ‘.MAKE.LEVEL’ will also be pushed into the new environment.
.warning message
The message prefixed by ‘warning:’ is printed along with the name of the makefile and line
number.
.if [!]expression [operator expression ...]
Test the value of an expression.
.ifdef [!]variable [operator variable ...]
Test the value of a variable.
.ifndef [!]variable [operator variable ...]
Test the value of a variable.
.ifmake [!]target [operator target ...]
Test the target being built.
.ifnmake [!] target [operator target ...]
Test the target being built.
.else Reverse the sense of the last conditional.
.elif [!] expression [operator expression ...]
A combination of ‘.else’ followed by ‘.if’.
.elifdef [!]variable [operator variable ...]
A combination of ‘.else’ followed by ‘.ifdef’.
.elifndef [!]variable [operator variable ...]
A combination of ‘.else’ followed by ‘.ifndef’.
.elifmake [!]target [operator target ...]
A combination of ‘.else’ followed by ‘.ifmake’.
.elifnmake [!]target [operator target ...]
A combination of ‘.else’ followed by ‘.ifnmake’.
.endif End the body of the conditional.
The operator may be any one of the following:
|| Logical OR.
&& Logical AND; of higher precedence than “||”.
As in C, bmake will only evaluate a conditional as far as is necessary to determine its value.
Parentheses may be used to change the order of evaluation. The boolean operator ‘!’ may be used to
logically negate an entire conditional. It is of higher precedence than ‘&&’.
The value of expression may be any of the following:
defined Takes a variable name as an argument and evaluates to true if the variable has been defined.
make Takes a target name as an argument and evaluates to true if the target was specified as part of
bmake's command line or was declared the default target (either implicitly or explicitly, see
.MAIN) before the line containing the conditional.
empty Takes a variable, with possible modifiers, and evaluates to true if the expansion of the
variable would result in an empty string.
exists Takes a file name as an argument and evaluates to true if the file exists. The file is searched
for on the system search path (see .PATH).
target Takes a target name as an argument and evaluates to true if the target has been defined.
commands
Takes a target name as an argument and evaluates to true if the target has been defined and has
commands associated with it.
Expression may also be an arithmetic or string comparison. Variable expansion is performed on both sides
of the comparison, after which the integral values are compared. A value is interpreted as hexadecimal
if it is preceded by 0x, otherwise it is decimal; octal numbers are not supported. The standard C
relational operators are all supported. If after variable expansion, either the left or right hand side
of a ‘==’ or ‘!=’ operator is not an integral value, then string comparison is performed between the
expanded variables. If no relational operator is given, it is assumed that the expanded variable is
being compared against 0 or an empty string in the case of a string comparison.
When bmake is evaluating one of these conditional expressions, and it encounters a (white-space
separated) word it doesn't recognize, either the “make” or “defined” expression is applied to it,
depending on the form of the conditional. If the form is ‘.ifdef’, ‘.ifndef’, or ‘.if’ the “defined”
expression is applied. Similarly, if the form is ‘.ifmake’ or ‘.ifnmake’, the “make” expression is
applied.
If the conditional evaluates to true the parsing of the makefile continues as before. If it evaluates to
false, the following lines are skipped. In both cases this continues until a ‘.else’ or ‘.endif’ is
found.
For loops are typically used to apply a set of rules to a list of files. The syntax of a for loop is:
.for variable [variable ...] in expression
⟨make-rules⟩
.endfor
After the for expression is evaluated, it is split into words. On each iteration of the loop, one word
is taken and assigned to each variable, in order, and these variables are substituted into the make-rules
inside the body of the for loop. The number of words must come out even; that is, if there are three
iteration variables, the number of words provided must be a multiple of three.
COMMENTS
Comments begin with a hash (‘#’) character, anywhere but in a shell command line, and continue to the end
of an unescaped new line.
SPECIAL SOURCES (ATTRIBUTES)
.EXEC Target is never out of date, but always execute commands anyway.
.IGNORE Ignore any errors from the commands associated with this target, exactly as if they all were
preceded by a dash (‘-’).
.MADE Mark all sources of this target as being up-to-date.
.MAKE Execute the commands associated with this target even if the -n or -t options were specified.
Normally used to mark recursive bmakes.
.META Create a meta file for the target, even if it is flagged as .PHONY, .MAKE, or .SPECIAL. Usage
in conjunction with .MAKE is the most likely case. In "meta" mode, the target is out-of-date
if the meta file is missing.
.NOMETA Do not create a meta file for the target. Meta files are also not created for .PHONY, .MAKE,
or .SPECIAL targets.
.NOMETA_CMP
Ignore differences in commands when deciding if target is out of date. This is useful if the
command contains a value which always changes. If the number of commands change, though, the
target will still be out of date. The same effect applies to any command line that uses the
variable .OODATE, which can be used for that purpose even when not otherwise needed or desired:
skip-compare-for-some:
@echo this will be compared
@echo this will not ${.OODATE:M.NOMETA_CMP}
@echo this will also be compared
The :M pattern suppresses any expansion of the unwanted variable.
.NOPATH Do not search for the target in the directories specified by .PATH.
.NOTMAIN Normally bmake selects the first target it encounters as the default target to be built if no
target was specified. This source prevents this target from being selected.
.OPTIONAL
If a target is marked with this attribute and bmake can't figure out how to create it, it will
ignore this fact and assume the file isn't needed or already exists.
.PHONY The target does not correspond to an actual file; it is always considered to be out of date,
and will not be created with the -t option. Suffix-transformation rules are not applied to
.PHONY targets.
.PRECIOUS
When bmake is interrupted, it normally removes any partially made targets. This source
prevents the target from being removed.
.RECURSIVE
Synonym for .MAKE.
.SILENT Do not echo any of the commands associated with this target, exactly as if they all were
preceded by an at sign (‘@’).
.USE Turn the target into bmake's version of a macro. When the target is used as a source for
another target, the other target acquires the commands, sources, and attributes (except for
.USE) of the source. If the target already has commands, the .USE target's commands are
appended to them.
.USEBEFORE
Exactly like .USE, but prepend the .USEBEFORE target commands to the target.
.WAIT If .WAIT appears in a dependency line, the sources that precede it are made before the sources
that succeed it in the line. Since the dependents of files are not made until the file itself
could be made, this also stops the dependents being built unless they are needed for another
branch of the dependency tree. So given:
x: a .WAIT b
echo x
a:
echo a
b: b1
echo b
b1:
echo b1
the output is always ‘a’, ‘b1’, ‘b’, ‘x’.
The ordering imposed by .WAIT is only relevant for parallel makes.
SPECIAL TARGETS
Special targets may not be included with other targets, i.e. they must be the only target specified.
.BEGIN Any command lines attached to this target are executed before anything else is done.
.DEFAULT
This is sort of a .USE rule for any target (that was used only as a source) that bmake can't
figure out any other way to create. Only the shell script is used. The .IMPSRC variable of a
target that inherits .DEFAULT's commands is set to the target's own name.
.DELETE_ON_ERROR
If this target is present in the makefile, it globally causes make to delete targets whose
commands fail. (By default, only targets whose commands are interrupted during execution are
deleted. This is the historical behavior.) This setting can be used to help prevent half-
finished or malformed targets from being left around and corrupting future rebuilds.
.END Any command lines attached to this target are executed after everything else is done.
.ERROR Any command lines attached to this target are executed when another target fails. The
.ERROR_TARGET variable is set to the target that failed. See also MAKE_PRINT_VAR_ON_ERROR.
.IGNORE Mark each of the sources with the .IGNORE attribute. If no sources are specified, this is the
equivalent of specifying the -i option.
.INTERRUPT
If bmake is interrupted, the commands for this target will be executed.
.MAIN If no target is specified when bmake is invoked, this target will be built.
.MAKEFLAGS
This target provides a way to specify flags for bmake when the makefile is used. The flags are
as if typed to the shell, though the -f option will have no effect.
.NOPATH Apply the .NOPATH attribute to any specified sources.
.NOTPARALLEL
Disable parallel mode.
.NO_PARALLEL
Synonym for .NOTPARALLEL, for compatibility with other pmake variants.
.OBJDIR The source is a new value for ‘.OBJDIR’. If it exists, bmake will chdir(2) to it and update the
value of ‘.OBJDIR’.
.ORDER The named targets are made in sequence. This ordering does not add targets to the list of
targets to be made. Since the dependents of a target do not get built until the target itself
could be built, unless ‘a’ is built by another part of the dependency graph, the following is a
dependency loop:
.ORDER: b a
b: a
The ordering imposed by .ORDER is only relevant for parallel makes.
.PATH The sources are directories which are to be searched for files not found in the current
directory. If no sources are specified, any previously specified directories are deleted. If
the source is the special .DOTLAST target, then the current working directory is searched last.
.PATH.suffix
Like .PATH but applies only to files with a particular suffix. The suffix must have been
previously declared with .SUFFIXES.
.PHONY Apply the .PHONY attribute to any specified sources.
.PRECIOUS
Apply the .PRECIOUS attribute to any specified sources. If no sources are specified, the
.PRECIOUS attribute is applied to every target in the file.
.SHELL Sets the shell that bmake will use to execute commands. The sources are a set of field=value
pairs.
name This is the minimal specification, used to select one of the built-in shell specs;
sh, ksh, and csh.
path Specifies the path to the shell.
hasErrCtl Indicates whether the shell supports exit on error.
check The command to turn on error checking.
ignore The command to disable error checking.
echo The command to turn on echoing of commands executed.
quiet The command to turn off echoing of commands executed.
filter The output to filter after issuing the quiet command. It is typically identical to
quiet.
errFlag The flag to pass the shell to enable error checking.
echoFlag The flag to pass the shell to enable command echoing.
newline The string literal to pass the shell that results in a single newline character when
used outside of any quoting characters.
Example:
.SHELL: name=ksh path=/bin/ksh hasErrCtl=true \
check="set -e" ignore="set +e" \
echo="set -v" quiet="set +v" filter="set +v" \
echoFlag=v errFlag=e newline="'\n'"
.SILENT Apply the .SILENT attribute to any specified sources. If no sources are specified, the .SILENT
attribute is applied to every command in the file.
.STALE This target gets run when a dependency file contains stale entries, having .ALLSRC set to the
name of that dependency file.
.SUFFIXES
Each source specifies a suffix to bmake. If no sources are specified, any previously specified
suffixes are deleted. It allows the creation of suffix-transformation rules.
Example:
.SUFFIXES: .o
.c.o:
cc -o ${.TARGET} -c ${.IMPSRC}
ENVIRONMENT
bmake uses the following environment variables, if they exist: MACHINE, MACHINE_ARCH, MACHINE_MULTIARCH,
MAKE, MAKEFLAGS, MAKEOBJDIR, MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX, MAKESYSPATH, PWD, and TMPDIR.
MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX and MAKEOBJDIR may only be set in the environment or on the command line to bmake and
not as makefile variables; see the description of ‘.OBJDIR’ for more details.
FILES
.depend list of dependencies
Makefile list of dependencies
makefile list of dependencies
sys.mk system makefile
/usr/share/mk system makefile directory
COMPATIBILITY
The basic make syntax is compatible between different versions of make; however the special variables,
variable modifiers and conditionals are not.
Older versions
An incomplete list of changes in older versions of bmake:
The way that .for loop variables are substituted changed after NetBSD 5.0 so that they still appear to be
variable expansions. In particular this stops them being treated as syntax, and removes some obscure
problems using them in .if statements.
The way that parallel makes are scheduled changed in NetBSD 4.0 so that .ORDER and .WAIT apply
recursively to the dependent nodes. The algorithms used may change again in the future.
Other make dialects
Other make dialects (GNU make, SVR4 make, POSIX make, etc.) do not support most of the features of bmake
as described in this manual. Most notably:
• The .WAIT and .ORDER declarations and most functionality pertaining to parallelization. (GNU
make supports parallelization but lacks these features needed to control it effectively.)
• Directives, including for loops and conditionals and most of the forms of include files. (GNU
make has its own incompatible and less powerful syntax for conditionals.)
• All built-in variables that begin with a dot.
• Most of the special sources and targets that begin with a dot, with the notable exception of
.PHONY, .PRECIOUS, and .SUFFIXES.
• Variable modifiers, except for the
:old=new
string substitution, which does not portably support globbing with ‘%’ and historically only
works on declared suffixes.
• The $> variable even in its short form; most makes support this functionality but its name
varies.
Some features are somewhat more portable, such as assignment with +=, ?=, and !=. The .PATH
functionality is based on an older feature VPATH found in GNU make and many versions of SVR4 make;
however, historically its behavior is too ill-defined (and too buggy) to rely upon.
The $@ and $< variables are more or less universally portable, as is the $(MAKE) variable. Basic use of
suffix rules (for files only in the current directory, not trying to chain transformations together,
etc.) is also reasonably portable.
SEE ALSO
mkdep(1)
HISTORY
bmake is derived from NetBSD make(1). It uses autoconf to facilitate portability to other platforms.
A make command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. This make implementation is based on Adam De Boor's
pmake program which was written for Sprite at Berkeley. It was designed to be a parallel distributed
make running jobs on different machines using a daemon called “customs”.
Historically the target/dependency “FRC” has been used to FoRCe rebuilding (since the target/dependency
does not exist... unless someone creates an “FRC” file).
BUGS
The make syntax is difficult to parse without actually acting on the data. For instance, finding the end
of a variable's use should involve scanning each of the modifiers, using the correct terminator for each
field. In many places make just counts {} and () in order to find the end of a variable expansion.
There is no way of escaping a space character in a filename.
Debian June 5, 2020 BMAKE(1)