# phpman > man > make-first-existing-target(1)

[MAKE-FIRST-EXISTING-TARGET(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/MAKE-FIRST-EXISTING-TARGET/1/markdown)    User Contributed Perl Documentation   [MAKE-FIRST-EXISTING-TARGET(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/MAKE-FIRST-EXISTING-TARGET/1/markdown)



## NAME
       make-first-existing-target - runs make on one of several targets

## SYNOPSIS
       make-first-existing-target [-c cmd] target1 [target2 ...] -- [make-options]

## DESCRIPTION
       The design of [_make_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/make/1/markdown) causes difficulty when you know that a Makefile probably has one of
       several standardized target names, and want build machinery to run exactly one of them,
       propagating any errors. [_make_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/make/1/markdown) will exit 2 if a target does not exist, but an existing
       target may also exit 2 due to some other failure. Makefiles cannot be reliably parsed to find
       targets by anything less Turing-complete than make, and make itself does not provide a way to
       enumerate the targets in a Makefile. It may not even be possible to enumerate the targets in
       a Makefile without executing part of it. (Proof of this is left as an exercise for the
       reader.)

       This program avoids the problems described above, by attempting to call each specified target
       in turn, until it observes make actually doing something for one of them.

## OPTIONS
       -c cmd
           This can be used to specify the make command to run. Default is "make".

## EXIT STATUS
       The exit status is 0 if at least one target existed and was successfully run, and nonzero
       otherwise.

## AUTHOR
       Joey Hess <<joey@kitenet.net>>

## LICENSE
       Same as GNU make.

## SEE ALSO
       [_make_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/make/1/markdown)



perl v5.18.2                                 2014-05-13                [MAKE-FIRST-EXISTING-TARGET(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/MAKE-FIRST-EXISTING-TARGET/1/markdown)