Override target in makefile to add more commands?

Question

At work we use a common makefile that other makefiles include (via the include statement) and it has a generic \"clean\" target that kills some common files. I want to add

Answer 1

Adding another possible solution I've seen for posterity... I know the OP was wary about changing the common makefile, but something like this works and involves minimal changes.

local makefile 1:

CLEAN=MyExe1 MyExe2
....
include /my/common/makefile

local makefile 2:

CLEAN=MyExe3 MyExe4
....
include /my/common/makefile

common makefile:

clean:
     rm -f *.dep *.o *.a $(CLEAN)

Basically the idea is to define some variable (in this case CLEAN) in each local makefile with all the specific items you want to delete. Then the common makefile runs rm -f on all the common file types to delete, plus whatever was specifically flagged for deletion in each local makefile via the CLEAN variable. If there's nothing specific to delete, simply omit the variable declaration or leave it empty (CLEAN=)

So now if we run make clean for local makefile 1, it executes

rm -f *.dep *.o *.a MyExe1 MyExe2

And if we run make clean for local makefile 2, it executes

rm -f *.dep *.o *.a MyExe3 MyExe4