makefile: Create a Makefile

In command: Process Command Line Arguments

Create a Makefile

Description

Create a Makefile for a data analysis workflow. The Makefile can include rules extracted from existing R files.

Usage

makefile(
  path_files = NULL,
  dir_make = NULL,
  name_make = "Makefile",
  overwrite = FALSE,
  quiet = FALSE
)

Arguments

path_files	A path from dir_make to a directory with R scripts containing calls to cmd_assign(). Optional.
dir_make	The directory where makefile() will create the Makefile. If no value is supplied, then 'makefile(); creates the Makefile the current working directory.
name_make	The name of the Makefile. The default is "Makefile".
overwrite	Whether to overwrite an existing Makefile. Default is FALSE.
quiet	Whether to suppress progress messages. Default is FALSE.

Details

To create a Makefile in the files directory, set files to ".".

To obtain the contents of the Makefile without creating a file on disk, creating the file on disk, set name_make to NULL.

Supplying a value for files is optional for makefile(), but compulsory for shell_script(). The output from makefile() includes some general-purpose Makefile commands, while the output from shell_script() is generated entirely from files.

Value

makefile() is called for its side effect, which is to create a file. However, makefile() also returns a string with the contents of the Makefile.

References

• Project Management with Make Makefiles in data analysis workflows

• GNU make Definitive guide

• Command-Line Programs Introduction to Rscript

See Also

• Creating a Makefile More on makefile()

• extract_make() Turn a cmd_assign() call into a Makefile rule

• shell_script() Shell script equivalent of makefile()

• cmd_assign() Process command line arguments

• Modular Workflows for Data Analysis Safe, flexible data analysis workflows

• littler Alternative to Rscript

Examples

library(fs)
library(withr)

with_tempdir({

  ## create 'src'  directory
  dir_create("src")

  ## put R scripts containing calls to
  ## 'cmd_assign' in the 'src' directory
  writeLines(c("cmd_assign(x = 1, .out = 'out/results.rds')",
               "results <- x + 1",
               "saveRDS(results, file = .out)"),
             con = "src/results.R")
  writeLines(c("cmd_assign(x = 1, .out = 'out/more_results.rds')",
               "more_results <- x + 2",
               "saveRDS(more_results, file = .out)"),
             con = "src/more_results.R")

  ## call 'makefile()'
  makefile(path_files = "src",
           dir_make = ".")

  ## Makefile has been created
  dir_tree()

  ## print contents of Makefile
  cat(readLines("Makefile"), sep = "\n")

})

command documentation built on Nov. 5, 2025, 7 p.m.