GNU make - Sequences Go to the first , previous , next , last section, table of contents .
When the same sequence of commands is useful in making various targets, you can define it as a canned sequence with the define directive, and refer to the canned sequence from the rules for those targets. The canned sequence is actually a variable, so the name must not conflict with other variable names. See section Defining Variables Verbatim , for a complete explanation of define . The first command in this example runs Yacc on the first dependency of whichever rule uses the canned sequence. The second command moves the output to the rule's target file name.