I also found them for many hours. No, this is not a built-in make function; it turned out to be a feature of the autotools makefile created.
Those THING-recursive targets are actually defined in the Makefile itself, but in a complicated way that you cannot use to simply search for grep .
It starts by defining the RECURSIVE_TARGETS variable in the Makefile, which looks like this:
RECURSIVE_TARGETS = all-recursive check-recursive dvi-recursive \ html-recursive info-recursive install-data-recursive \ install-dvi-recursive install-exec-recursive \ install-html-recursive install-info-recursive \ install-pdf-recursive install-ps-recursive install-recursive \ installcheck-recursive installdirs-recursive pdf-recursive \ ps-recursive uninstall-recursive
The following defines the real definition of these goals somewhere below:
$(RECURSIVE_TARGETS): @fail= failcom='exit 1'; \ for f in x $$MAKEFLAGS; do \ case $$f in \ *=* | --[!k]*);; \ *k*) failcom='fail=yes';; \ esac; \ done; \ dot_seen=no; \ target=`echo $@ | sed s/-recursive//`; \ list='$(SUBDIRS)'; for subdir in $$list; do \ echo "Making $$target in $$subdir"; \ if test "$$subdir" = "."; then \ dot_seen=yes; \ local_target="$$target-am"; \ else \ local_target="$$target"; \ fi; \ ($(am__cd) $$subdir && $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) $$local_target) \ || eval $$failcom; \ done; \ if test "$$dot_seen" = "no"; then \ $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) "$$target-am" || exit 1; \ fi; test -z "$$fail"
What decides in this:
all-recursive check-recursive dvi-recursive \ html-recursive info-recursive install-data-recursive \ install-dvi-recursive install-exec-recursive \ install-html-recursive install-info-recursive \ install-pdf-recursive install-ps-recursive install-recursive \ installcheck-recursive installdirs-recursive pdf-recursive \ ps-recursive uninstall-recursive: @fail= failcom='exit 1'; \ for f in x $$MAKEFLAGS; do \ case $$f in \ *=* | --[!k]*);; \ *k*) failcom='fail=yes';; \ esac; \ done; \ dot_seen=no; \ target=`echo $@ | sed s/-recursive//`; \ list='$(SUBDIRS)'; for subdir in $$list; do \ echo "Making $$target in $$subdir"; \ if test "$$subdir" = "."; then \ dot_seen=yes; \ local_target="$$target-am"; \ else \ local_target="$$target"; \ fi; \ ($(am__cd) $$subdir && $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) $$local_target) \ || eval $$failcom; \ done; \ if test "$$dot_seen" = "no"; then \ $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) "$$target-am" || exit 1; \ fi; test -z "$$fail"
This target recipe is essentially boilerplate code for scrolling through each subdirectory found in the current folder and running make inside it, using the same target name, but with a "-recursive" section.
Please note that these THING-recursive targets are not intended to be directly invoked by the user; it will be launched automatically as part of the normal THING target (without "-recursive") as a mechanism to launch a building with the same purpose in the subproject tree.
Appendix: sample code is taken from the configured root Makefile GNU Flash Player (version e9eb84e ).
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