Display colors in Makefile#

In a previous note, I shared how to create a help command in a Makefile.

This time, let’s make it visually appealing by adding colors to the output.

Here’s how to do it:

# COLORS
YELLOW = \033[33m
GREEN  = \033[32m
WHITE  = \033[37m
RESET  = \033[0m

help: ##@helper Display all commands and descriptions
	@awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":.*##@"; printf "\n${WHITE}Usage:${RESET}\n  make <target>\n"} \
	/^[.a-zA-Z_-]+:.*?##@/ { \
		split($$2, parts, " "); \
		section = parts[1]; \
		description = substr($$2, length(section) + 2); \
		sections[section] = sections[section] sprintf("  ${YELLOW}%-15s${RESET} ${GREEN}%s${RESET}\n", $$1, description); \
	} \
	END { \
		for (section in sections) { \
			printf "\n${WHITE}%s${RESET}\n", section; \
			printf "%s", sections[section]; \
		} \
	}' $(MAKEFILE_LIST)

• YELLOW, GREEN, WHITE, and RESET are ANSI escape codes for terminal colors.
• \033[33m sets the color to yellow, \033[32m to green, and \033[37m to white.
• \033[0m resets the color to the terminal default.

It formats the output with colors:

• Yellow for target names.
• Green for descriptions.
• White for the rest

2025/01/23 12:00 AM