Target Attributes assign certain properties to targets. There are two forms:
target [...] [attribute ...] : [sources ...]
attribute [...] : [target ...]
Both forms assign attributes to the targets on the dependency line. If no targets are listed, the attribute is inherited by all targets subsequently defined.
The negation of .ATTRIBUTE is .NOATTRIBUTE.
| Attribute | Description |
| .ALWAYS | Always rebuild named target. |
| .CHAIN | Chain inference rules. |
| .DEPSRC | Named targets are dependent sources. |
| .IGNORE | Ignore non-zero return status. |
| .INFER | Force inference rule check. |
| .LIBRARY | Named targets are object libraries. |
| .MAKE | Override "-n", "-q", and "-t" command-line options. |
| .MISER | Use memory miser for named target (MS-DOS only.) |
| .NOCOMPARE | Target(s) named are not timestamp-compared when appearing as a source. |
| .NODEFAULT | Target(s) named are not the default target. |
| .PHONY | Same as .ALWAYS and .NOCOMPARE. |
| .PRECIOUS | Do not delete non-zero return status targets. |
| .REREAD | Reread target timestamp and location from disk. |
| .RULE | Indicates dependency line is an inference rule. |
| .QUEUE | Indicates shell lines may be queued. |
| .SILENT | Do not display executing shell lines. |
| .VCSTOUCH | Set extracted source file timestamp to VCS version timestamp. |
Special targets execute shell lines at specific times during the Make process.
| Target | Usage |
| .AFTER : [source...] | Build sources and execute shell lines after Make has built its last target. |
| .BEFORE : [source...] | Build sources and execute shell lines before Make builds the first target. |
| .DEFAULT[.ext ] | Supplies shell lines which can be used to update targets of extension .ext. .DEFAULT[.ext] is converted to an equivalent "%[.ext] : " rule. |
| .XXX_GET | Where XXX is one of "PVCS", "RCS", "SS", "TLIB". These special targets supply shell lines and attributes for rules that "get" files from the named version control system. |