helpmakego - A make dependency resolver for Go

How it Works

helpmakego is a tool designed to resolve dependencies for Go projects, making it easier to integrate with Makefiles. It traverses the Go module's directory structure, identifying all files that are part of the module, including optional test files if specified.

helpmakego aims to provide as fine grain a dependency set as possible. It respects:

• go.mod (including local replace directives) and go.sum
• go.work (including local replace directives) and go.work.sum
• go:embed directives

Like the go build tool itself, helpmakego only considers packages that are actually referenced.

Usage Example

To use helpmakego in a Makefile, you can set up your dependencies like this:

# Makefile

# Ensure that `helpmakego` is installed at ${HELPMAKEGO} before it is used to resolve targets.
#
# This has the side effect of ensuring that the `bin` directory is present.
HELPMAKEGO_VERSION := v0.1.0
HELPMAKEGO := bin/${HELPMAKEGO_VERSION}/helpmakego
_ := $(shell if ! [ -x ${HELPMAKEGO} ]; then \
	GOBIN=$(shell pwd)/bin/${HELPMAKEGO_VERSION} go install github.com/iwahbe/helpmakego@${HELPMAKEGO_VERSION}; \
	fi \
)

# Define the target and its dependencies

bin/my_tool: $(shell ${HELPMAKEGO} ./cmd/my_tool)
	@echo "Building my_tool..."
	go build -o $@ ./cmd/my_tool

# package.zip may be expensive to build, but it will only be rebuilt when necessary.
package.zip: bin/my-tool
    zip my-tool other-files

In this example, helpmakego . is used to dynamically generate the list of file dependencies for my_target. This ensures that any changes in the Go module's dependencies will trigger a rebuild of my_target, and that my_target will only rebuild when it needs to.