Automatically generate recipe continuation in makefile

Question

I want to generate a file at execution of recipe time that lists every word of a variable in a seperate line of the file. Here is the start of the rule. Every word in $(OBJ_LIST) should be put into make_temp. Note: $(OBJ_LIST) is a list of .o files. Note: using > for .RECIPEPREFIX.

$(MDIR)zzz.exe: $(OBJ_LIST)
>  if exist make_temp del make_temp

If I put these 3 lines under this then the file will have the first 3 words in the file.

>  echo $(word 1,$+) >> make_temp
>  echo $(word 2,$+) >> make_temp
>  echo $(word 3,$+) >> make_temp

I have tried to use foreach and eval to do this.

>  $(foreach obj,$+,$(eval > echo $(obj) >> make_temp))

This comes up with the error makefile.min:473: * recipe commences before first target. Stop. This is the same error that would come up when I put a line with > on a line with no rule starting syntax before it. So it would seem that this does not continue the current recipe list which is what I want to do.

How can I make the foreach and eval continue the current recipe list and/or generate the list of files using alternative methods.

Answer 1

Have you tried

$(foreach obj,$+,$(shell echo $(obj) >> make_temp))

?

Answer 2

Using foreach to construct the recipe in form {echo o1; echo o2; ...} > make_temp:

make_temp : $(OBJ_LIST)
>   { $(foreach o,$+,echo '$o';) } > $@

Or, using shell facilities:

make_temp : $(OBJ_LIST)
>   for o in $+ do echo $$o; done > $@

Answer 3

I have solved this as follows.

make_temp: makefile.min
>  $(shell if exist make_temp del make_temp)
>  $(foreach obj,$(OBJ_LIST),$(shell echo $(obj) >> make_temp))

If I don't put the if statement in a shell it is executed after the foreach loop is executed for unknown reasons so the file gets deleted.

Generating this file takes a long time hence I have made it only generate when the makefile is changed.

I forgot to mention I am doing this on Windows. I don't think the first solution by Eldar Abusalimov has an equivalent form in Windows. I converted the second solution to windows as follows.

make_temp : $(OBJ_LIST)
>  for %%a in $(OBJ_LIST) do echo %a

This doesn't work in my case because $(OBJ_LIST) is longer than 8192 characters which is the limit for cmd.exe in Windows. That is why I want to generate this file; because I can't use $(OBJ_LIST) directly.

Thank you for your help.