The most useful Makefile targets

By now configure has generated the output files such as a Makefile. Most projects include a Makefile with a basic set of well-known targets (see the section called Targets and dependencies in the chapter called Introducing Makefiles). A target is a name of a task that you want make to perform - usually it is to build all of the programs belonging to your package (commonly known as the all target). From your build directory, the following commands are likely to work for a configured package:

There are other less commonly used targets which are likely to be recognized, particularly if the package includes a Makefile which conforms to the GNU Makefile standard or is generated by automake. You may wish to inspect the generated Makefile to see what other targets have been included.