How to run a bash script from a Makefile?

Question

I have a Makefile from which I want to call another external bash script to do another part of the building. How would I best go about doing this?

Carl Norum · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-24T00:17:09.220

66

Just like calling any other command from a makefile:

target: prerequisites
    shell_script arg1 arg2 arg3

Regarding your further explanation:

.PHONY: do_script

do_script: 
    shell_script arg1 arg2 arg3

prerequisites: do_script

target: prerequisites

edited Mar 24 '10 at 00:17

answered Mar 23 '10 at 05:00

Carl Norum

219,201
40
422
469

but I need to run the script before the prerequisites – Matthew FL Mar 23 '10 at 23:47
3

@Matthew, then your makefile is set up incorrectly. Make a new `.PHONY` target that your prerequisites depend on, and run the script in that target. – Carl Norum Mar 24 '10 at 00:15
1

Edited with more for your case. – Carl Norum Mar 24 '10 at 00:17

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 05 '17 at 23:58

Perhaps not the "right" way to do it like the answers already provided, but I came across this question because I wanted my makefile to run a script I wrote to generate a header file that would provide the version for a whole package of software. I have quite a bit of targets in this package, and didn't want to add a brand new prerequisite to them all. Putting this towards the beginning of my makefile worked for me

$(shell ./genVer.sh)

which tells make to simply run a shell command. ./genVer.sh is the path (same directory as the makefile) and name of my script to run. This runs no matter which target I specify (including clean, which is the downside, but ultimately not a huge deal to me).

whatever the right way is supposed to be, this is the only answer that made sense to me! — Jules Colle, Aug 06 '20 at 18:26

bignose · Answer 3 · 2023-01-31T05:31:39.240

Each of the actions in the makefile rule is a command that will be executed in a subshell. You need to ensure that each command is independent, since each one will be run inside a separate subshell.

For this reason, you will often see line breaks escaped when the author wants several commands to run in the same subshell:

targetfoo:
    command_the_first foo bar baz
    command_the_second wibble wobble warble
    command_the_third which is rather too long \
        to fit on a single line so \
        intervening line breaks are escaped
    command_the_fourth spam eggs beans

score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 02 '21 at 15:58

Currently using Makefile, I can easily call the bash script like this:

dump:
    ./script_dump.sh

And call:

make dump

This also works like mentioned in the other answer:

dump:
    $(shell ./script_dump.sh)

But the downside is that you don't get the shell commands from the console unless you store in a variable and echo it.

decoder247 · Answer 5 · 2023-05-18T10:23:36.540

Not sure if this is best practice, but the most straightforward approach I've found is to simply use bash, if your terminal has it:

run_file:
    bash ./scripts/some_shell_script.sh

This negates the need to alter the permissions of the file first then by executing directly i.e. via ./scripts/some_shell_script.sh. Alternately to source the command in the spawned make process, the following 2 methods below will also work (the ./ is optional).

run_file_source:
    source ./scripts/some_shell_script.sh

run_file_source_alt:
    . ./scripts/some_shell_script.sh

Within your terminal, the following can then be run.

$ make run_file

An extended make entry to run a python file after running a shell script to activate the virtual environment to run it in (by chaining commands with &&):

run-python:
    @bash -c "source ./scripts/python/activate_env.sh && \
    python src/python_scripts/main.py"

run-python-alt:
    @source ./scripts/python/activate_env.sh && \
    python src/python_scripts/main.py

How to run a bash script from a Makefile?

5 Answers5

Linked