Make: recursive make ignores -s

Question

observe the difference between make silent and make noisy. I asked make to be silent on the bar rule, but it is only silent on the foo rule, too.

What am I missing?

noisy:
    @make foo

silent:
    @make -s foo

foo:
    @make -s bar

bar:
    @echo bar

running it:

$ make silent
bar

$ make noisy
make[1]: Entering directory `/tmp/s'
make[2]: Entering directory `/tmp/s'
bar
make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/s'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/s'

I expected the noisy foo -> bar call to not print "Entering directory"

Answer 1

Options are passed from a parent make to a sub-make using the MAKEFLAGS environment variable, to which the sub-make adds the command-line flags it received. If a sub-make doesn't receive -s (--silent), -w (--print-directory), or --no-print-directory, it automatically adds -w to its own MAKEFLAGS. The order of precedence for enabling and disabling directory printing seems to be (from weakest to strongest) -s, -w, --no-print-directory.

So, when you run make silent, the first recursive call adds -s to MAKEFLAGS, and the second call knows not to touch the flags. However, when you run make noisy, the first recursive call adds -w to MAKEFLAGS since you didn't tell it not to be silent, and from then on, -s won't have the effect you're looking for. You can use --no-print-directory instead, since it overrides -w.