# Echo Command in cmakelist

**URL:** <https://discourse.cmake.org/t/echo-command-in-cmakelist/2957>\
**Category:** Code\
**Tags:** os:windows, gen:makefiles\
**Created:** [March 15, 2021, 4:55am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/echo-command-in-cmakelist/2957 "2021-03-15T04:55:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![deepan](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@deepan](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/deepan)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:55am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/echo-command-in-cmakelist/2957/1 "2021-03-15T04:55:07Z")

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I want to add comments to cmakelist so that they appear during make.  
for exmaple, before starting a module, the command prompt should show “Starting module1”…

makefile creators are using echo command. I want to know how to do the same in cmakelists.

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**Author:** ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/ben.boeckel)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:37pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/echo-command-in-cmakelist/2957/2 "2021-03-15T16:37:57Z")

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`message(STATUS "Starting module1")` is probably what you want.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![deepan](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@deepan](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/deepan)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:46pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/echo-command-in-cmakelist/2957/3 "2021-03-15T16:46:13Z")

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message(STATUS “”) prints when we are generating makefile from cmake.  
I want to print during makefile to executables

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/ben.boeckel)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:50pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/echo-command-in-cmakelist/2957/4 "2021-03-15T16:50:20Z")

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Oh! CMake doesn’t have a builtin way of doing that. I suppose you could do `add_custom_command(PRE_BUILD)` for the libraries you want to do this for.