Makefile Targets

all

This is the default target. Depending on what your build/host/target configuration is, it coordinates all the things that need to be built.

doc

Produce info-formatted documentation. Also, make dvi is available for DVI-formatted documentation, and make generated-manpages to generate man pages.

mostlyclean

Delete the files made while building the compiler.

clean

That, and all the other files built by make all.

distclean

That, and all the files created by configure.

extraclean

That, and any temporary or intermediate files, like emacs backup files.

maintainer-clean

Distclean plus any file that can be generated from other files. Note that additional tools may be required beyond what is normally needed to build gcc.

install

Installs gcc.

uninstall

Deletes installed files.

check

Run the testsuite. This creates a testsuite subdirectory that has various .sum and .log files containing the results of the testing. You can run subsets with, for example, make check-gcc. You can specify specific tests by setting RUNTESTFLAGS to be the name of the .exp file, optionally followed by (for some tests) an equals and a file wildcard, like:

          make check-gcc RUNTESTFLAGS="execute.exp=19980413-*"
          

Note that running the testsuite may require additional tools be installed, such as TCL or dejagnu.

bootstrap

Builds gcc three times--once with the native compiler, once with the native-built compiler it just built, and once with the compiler it built the second time. In theory, the last two should produce the same results, which make compare can check. Each step of this process is called a "stage", and the results of each stage N (N = 1...3) are copied to a subdirectory stageN/.

bootstrap-lean

Like bootstrap, except that the various stages are removed once they're no longer needed. This saves disk space.

bubblestrap

Once bootstrapped, this incrementally rebuilds each of the three stages, one at a time. It does this by "bubbling" the stages up from their subdirectories, rebuilding them, and copying them back to their subdirectories. This will allow you to, for example, quickly rebuild a bootstrapped compiler after changing the sources, without having to do a full bootstrap.

quickstrap

Rebuilds the most recently built stage. Since each stage requires special invocation, using this target means you don't have to keep track of which stage you're on or what invocation that stage needs.

cleanstrap

Removed everything (make clean) and rebuilds (make bootstrap).

stageN (N = 1...4)

For each stage, moves the appropriate files to the stageN subdirectory.

unstageN (N = 1...4)

Undoes the corresponding stageN.

restageN (N = 1...4)

Undoes the corresponding stageN and rebuilds it with the appropriate flags.

compare

Compares the results of stages 2 and 3. This ensures that the compiler is running properly, since it should produce the same object files regardless of how it itself was compiled.