The bash-completion package does not handle command make, while we can extend the completion support for make by adding bash configurations with keyword complete.

Solution

In ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile file, add the following:

complete -W "\`if [ -f Makefile ]; then grep -oE '^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+:([^=]|$)' Makefile | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$//'; elif [ -f makefile ]; then grep -oE '^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+:([^=]|$)' makefile | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$//'; fi \`" make

This complete entry would add a completion rule for command make. The option -W is followed by a word list as completion contents. The word list is generated by a series command: first check whether regular file Makefile or makefile exist at current path, then using grep and regular expression to extract targets in makefile, finally sed to word list.

Also note that bash’s if-elif conditional statements use semi-colon to separate condition, execution, condition, execution … And finally ends with fi.

With the edition to bash configuration described above, now we are able to press tab to complete targets for make or press tab twice to see candidates.

Limitations

Makefile or makefile must be at the same path where you type the command, which means the solution cannot work with make’s option -C. Because it simply searches the specific file (./Makefile or ./makefile), the targets in other makefile included by the primary makefile would not appear in the completion.

Credits

• bash completion of makefile target - Thank Cibin Joseph for the .bashrc solution.