What does “all” stand for in a makefile?

Question

I read some tutorials concerning Makefiles but for me it is still unclear for what the target \"all\" stands for and what it does.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The manual for GNU Make gives a clear definition for all in its list of standard targets.

If the author of the Makefile is following that convention then the target all should:

1. Compile the entire program, but not build documentation.
2. Be the the default target. As in running just make should do the same as make all.

To achieve 1 all is typically defined as a .PHONY target that depends on the executable(s) that form the entire program:

.PHONY : all
all : executable

To achieve 2 all should either be the first target defined in the make file or be assigned as the default goal:

.DEFAULT_GOAL := all