Modified makefile help with colors and required targets

[kidpixo]

Hi,
first time user here, thanks for the repo!

I modified the makefile and the help target to have a simplified help and get the target+required target+ description

I have a fancy colors-help and a clean almost no dependencies help ( I found it useful in docker images).

My makefile uses this structure target : required_targets ## inline description , this syntax allow me to easily grep the targets and their description and I find it easy to read the makefile too.

.DEFAULT_GOAL := helpcol

install_package :  ## install the package from setup.py via setuptools
	python setup.py install --verbose
# cleaning
clean-pyc: ## remove all pyc, pyo and __pycache__
	find . -name '*.pyc' -exec rm -rf {} +
	find . -name '*.pyo' -exec rm -rf {} +
	find . -name '__pycache__'  -exec rm -rf {} +

help: ## Show help. Only lines with ": ##" will show up! This is a plain help, requires only grep+sed.
	@grep -h "## " $(MAKEFILE_LIST) | sed '/grep -h/d'

helpcol: ## Show help. Only lines with ": ##" will show up! This require columns. Shows: rules(green), targets(red), description.
	@(echo "$$(tput bold)Available rules>$$(tput sgr0;tput setaf 1)target$$(tput sgr0)>description"; \
	grep -h ":.*## " $(MAKEFILE_LIST) |\
		sed -E -e '/grep -h/d' -e 's/([^:]+)\s?:([^#]+)## (.*)/'$$(tput setaf 6)'\1>'$$(tput setaf 1)'\2'$$(tput sgr0)'>\3/' ) |\
	   	column -t -s '>' | sort

Example output :

[isms]

Hi @kidpixo, thanks for commenting. Do you know if this works across platforms?

[kidpixo]

Hi @isms,
Good point, I have no idea. I use it in OSX and I can test a couple of Linux distro with docker, but I think it should just work, it calls a subshell and execute some commands there, like your original makefile.
I'll update this issue with some tests.

[kidpixo]

Tested with debian 9 (Stretch) and it works, installing from standard aptitude repository :

• gnu make
• column from bsdmainutils package.

Maybe a less fancy helpcol version without column -t -s '>' | sort could be better, but I purposely split in a base help and a fancy helpcol(or) targets.