checkmake - Man Page

checkmake [options] makefile ...

checkmake is a linter for Makefiles. It allows for a set of configurable rules being run against a Makefile or a set of \*.mk files.

-h,  –help

Show this help message and exit.

–version

Show version information.

–debug

Enable debug output for troubleshooting.

–config path

Specify the configuration file to read (default: checkmake.ini).

–format format

Set a custom output format using Go’s text/template syntax. This option customizes how violations are displayed in text mode. Cannot be used together with –output (mutually exclusive).

Example:

checkmake --format '{{.Rule}}: {{.Violation}}' Makefile

-o,  –output mode

Select the overall output mode. Supported values:

• text (default): human-readable table or formatted text output.
• json: structured machine-readable JSON output.

When –output=json is specified, –format is ignored and violations are printed as a JSON array.

Example:

checkmake -o json Makefile | jq

list-rules

Display all registered rules and their descriptions.

maxbodylength

Target bodies should be kept simple and short (no more than 8 lines by default). This is number is configurable (see below).

minphony

A minimum list of required phony targets must be present By default these are all,clean,and test. This list is configurable (see below).

phonydeclared

Every target without a body needs to be marked PHONY

timestampexpanded

timestamp variables should be simply expanded

uniquetargets

Targets should be uniquely defined because duplicates can cause recipe overrides or unintended merges.

By default checkmake looks for a checkmake.ini file in the same folder it’s executed in, and then as fallback in ~/checkmake.ini. This can be overridden by passing the --config= argument pointing it to a different configuration file. With the configuration file the [default] section is for checkmake itself while sections named after the rule names are passed to the rules as their configuration. All keys/values are hereby treated as strings and passed to the rule in a string/string map.

The following configuration options for checkmake itself are supported within the default section:

default.format

This enables the custom output formatter with the given template string as a format

maxBodylength.maxBodylength This allows to override the maximum number of lines for a rule body that checkmake will allow from the default of 5 to a different number

minphony.required This allows to override the list of minimum required phony targets from the default of (all, test, clean) to any list of target name strings. The value is a comma-separated list of strings. Setting minphony.required to the empty string disabled the minphony rule altogether.

checkmake exits with the following status codes:

 0:   checkmake ran successfully and found no rule violations
 1:   checkmake found one or more rule violations, or encountered an execution error

Unlike previous versions, checkmake no longer exits with the exact number of violations. Any nonzero exit status now indicates that either violations were detected or an error occurred during execution.

Please file bugs against the issue tracker: https://github.com/checkmake/checkmake/issues

make(1)

Daniel Schauenberg d@unwiredcouch.com\c.