How to get list of sub-targets which got hit in a makefile?

Question

I have a makefile as follows,

all: target1
        @echo "$(USER)"

target1: target2
        @echo "$(HOME)"

target2:
        @echo "$(SHELL)"

If I execute make all , I will get some output as expected. But is there way to know which targets got hit when ran that command. In this case, make all invoked target1, target2 . If I had done make target1 then only target2 would have invoked.

One very bad solution I did was adding echo statement in all my targets as follows,

all: target1
        @echo "Running $@"
        @echo "$(USER)"

target1: target2
        @echo "Running $@"
        @echo "$(HOME)"

target2:
        @echo "Running $@"
        @echo "$(SHELL)"

Is there any good solution without having to add such prints?

Answer 1

First of all, when you run

make target1

You should see first target2 then target1 executed..

If you want to see how make orders the targets and executes them, you can run make -d .

Alternatively, if you want to see the shell command lines that are executed without actually running them, the option --dry-run exists but does not indicate the actual target names.