How can I use .NOTPARALLEL in makefile only on specific targets?

Question

I have 5 labels in Makefile:

all: label1 label2 label3 label4 last_label

I want last_label to be done last, and I want to use make -j. If I use .NOTPARALLEL, it will make all of them NOTPARALLEL, any suggestion on how to do that?

Answer 1

If the reason last_label needs to run last is that it needs data from the other labels, the best approach would be to tell make about that dependency:

all: last_label

last_label: label1 label2 label3 label4

If there's not a true dependency (i.e., if you don't want last_label to be rebuilt if one of the others changes), and if you're using GNU Make, you can specify these as "order-only" dependencies--make will just make sure they exist before last_label is built:

all: last_label

last_label: | label1 label2 label3 label4

Answer 2

Create a target specifying the four targets that can be executed in parallel & include this and last_label in the all target:

intermediate: label1 label2 label3 label4

all:
        $(MAKE) intermediate
        $(MAKE) last_label

This would execute the targets specified within intermediate in parallel, but intermediate and last_label would be forced consecutively.

(Note that the leading space before $(MAKE) is a TAB character.)