LilyPond Contributor's Guide: 12.2 Tips for working on the build system

## 12.2 Tips for working on the build system

- Add:

  >     echo "aaa"

  >     echo "bbb"

  to the build system files in various places. This will let you track where the program is, in various points of the build.

  PH note. There are lots of places where Make doesn’t let you put echo commands. My top tip for tracing how make runs is to put

  >     $(error Some Text to display)

  This will stop make running and print the text `Some Text to display`.

  End PH note.

- First task: understand how `make website` works, without the translations. Looking at the english-only website is the best introduction to the build system... it only covers about 5% of the whole thing, but even that will likely take 10 hours or more.

#### LilyPond — Contributor’s Guide