Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> sed -n 's/^\([a-z]*\):.*/\1/p' Makefile  # plus uniq...
>> They are all pretty much standard targets, and documented at the top of
>> the Makefile.
>
> It's not always easy to find the doc corresponding to a given target, so
> I think it would indeed be a good idea to make "make help" return some
> useful info.
> I also think it would be a valuable addition to the GNU coding standards.
> Just like all commands should accept a "--help", it would make sense for
> the main Makefile to do something useful with "make help".

How about something like the attached patch?

I'm not a Makefile expert, so I couldn't find a way to skip the
configure step and immediately echo.

Thanks,
Stefan Kangas