-w Option

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The -print-directory Option

If you use several levels of recursive make invocations, the -w or -print-directory option can make the output a lot easier to understand by showing each directory as make starts processing it and as make finishes processing it. For example, if make -w is run in the directory /u/gnu/make, make will print a line of the form:

make: Entering directory `/u/gnu/make'.

before doing anything else, and a line of the form:

make: Leaving directory `/u/gnu/make'.

when processing is completed.

Normally, you do not need to specify this option because make does it for you: -w is turned on automatically when you use the -C option, and in sub-makes. make will not automatically turn on -w if you also use -s, which says to be silent, or if you use -no-print-directory to explicitly disable it.