New Makefile Output & Debugging

First, thanks a ton for the new 0.51.0 Makefile support! This is going to save a bunch of time on Rails & Lambda build times since we typically have to build CSS/JS assets using non-deployment gems. Hence having full control allows our CI/CD (GitHub Actions) to cache different dev/deploy gem vendor directories.

That said, I am new to Makefiles and found their adoption to be a little difficult. I found myself wanting to echo parts of the build but nothing was showing during sam build. Is there something this library can do (or myself) when using a Makefile to see what is happing in my own files?

I also realize this just might be having to learn make. But thought I would ask first. Thanks again!

[sriram-mv]

As @smacintyre pointed out, yeah the intention behind the usage of the makefile was so that users can use it to adjust everything as required, before being picked up by sam build.

However, that being said. Streaming the output of triggering the make - build target, seems reasonable.

[smacintyre]

When creating your Makefile it will be easier to initially run make directly while you get things setup. That way you can echo things and see what is going on. Also, keep in mind that make is going to be called for each function with Metadata: makefile set.

You can run the build for a function by running following. Where FUNCTION is the logical name of your function and PATH is where you want the files to be deposited for your testing… Then you can see the full output of your function including any echos. By default commands are executed with /bin/sh.

make build-[FUNCTION] ARTIFACTS_DIR=[PATH]

Make is very flexible and worth learning. A quick tutorial is at http://makefiletutorial.com/ . Also check out the GNU Make Standard Library. Once you have it setup you shouldn’t have to modify to much.