Question

Suppose I have a simple makefile like:

hello:
   echo "hello world"

bye:
   echo "bye bye"

Then in bash I want something like:

make h < tab >

so it can complete to

make hello

I found a simple way like creating empty files hello and bye but I’m looking for something more sophisticated.

Answer 1

This answer from 2010 is outdated – the project mentioned here seems to have been discontinued.

Could this be what you’re looking for?

http://freshmeat.net/projects/bashcompletion/

make [Tab] would complete on all
targets in Makefile. This project was
conceived to produce programmable
completion routines for the most
common Linux/UNIX commands, reducing
the amount of typing sysadmins and
programmers need to do on a daily
basis.