ignoring at (@) symbol in makefiles

Question

In makefiles, a line prefixed with an at symbols disables the print of the output. I have a makefile where every line is prefixed with an at, but for debug I need to see what's going on. Is there a way to tell make to ignore the at and output the line ? the debug is excessive, and the -n option prints them, but does not do anything (it's for dry run)

Answer 1

Make a variable that has a default value of @:

AT := @

And then use that in your Makefile:

foo:
    $(AT)fooc -o $@

Then run make as make AT=. You can get fancier than that, if you like:

V := 0
AT_0 := @
AT_1 :=
AT = $(AT_$(V))

This will make commands silent, unless V is set to 1 (e.g., make V=1). This uses the non-POSIX, but common feature of recursive variable expansion.