# make(1) arguments



## niellusNL (May 14, 2012)

Hi all,

*E*very now and then *I* find people describing things on forums on how to use "make".
I notice how they add arguments to the make command such as "make install", "make config" etc.

My question is, where can *I* find documentation about all these arguments?

Have already tried the regular sources such as the man page for make(1), google and the forum search engine. 

Tia,
~ Niels


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## SirDice (May 14, 2012)

Relatively simple tutorial: http://mrbook.org/tutorials/make/

That should give you some idea how it works.


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## egelor (May 14, 2012)

> My question is, where can I find documentation about all these arguments?


I find this for you. If it helps! 
The most common are make install, make depend, make uninstall or deinstall GNU "make"


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## niellusNL (May 14, 2012)

Hi SirDice,

*T*hanks a lot for the quick reply! I am not sure, but *I* think *I* might have to specify my question a bit more.

Currently *I* am not so much interested on the topic of how to use makefiles but more in how *I* can use make(1) with the ports tree.

So far *I* have been experimenting on FreeBSD and my pinnacle was the ability to install VirtualBox from the ports (including the troubleshooting and stuff). For example, when *I* did that, *I* got all kinds of errors about how some dependancies weren found or installed. What *I* did was install a complete gnome2 using *pkg_add -r*. The reason to that was that *I* know how long it takes for it to compile, but mainly because *I* have to wait and set each config option while building.

To trouble shoot these kinds of problem (automating a gnome2 build from ports and find out about dependencies for packages) are pretty easy to google on.

Things *I* found out are arguments liks "*make search keyword=bla*", "*make install clean*", "*make config*". It's exactly those kinds of arguments which *I* can't seem to find documentation about, unless *I* specificly google for them which means *I* have to know them.

Curious about other arguments possible with the make(1) command *I* started to look in the man page, but that doesn't show any of them.

Basically what *I* want is to find out a list with all possible arguments so *I* can figure out how to use them to install VirtualBox with only the dependancies it needs, and in the future other software. Instead of a full gnome2 install (did that so *I* was kind of sure *I* wouldn't miss anything for VirtualBox).


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## DutchDaemon (May 14, 2012)

/usr/ports/Mk/, specifically /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk.


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## niellusNL (May 14, 2012)

Thanks guys! All your answers combined gave me a good understanding of where to find information about this matter, looks like *I* have some reading up to do


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## freethread (May 14, 2012)

In addition to *SirDice* and *DutchDaemon* posts, the man page ports(7)() is the reference to those specific ports system commands using make.


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## jb_fvwm2 (May 15, 2012)

"only the dependencies it needs" -- you may find the portmaster -i command useful... 
	
	



```
#examples...
portmaster -i -PP -B /var/db/pkg/shared-mime-info-1.0 p5-Class-C3-0.23
#or sometimes
portmaster -d -B -P -i  -g  shared-mime-info
```
or some variation, it seems to speed things up if one has many ports installed...


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