Looking at some targets of my Makefile I saw that there were some duplication. I didn't know that I could create functions... Until now :-) Here is a simple Makefile with a custom function: define generate_file sed 's/{NAME}/$(1)/' greetings.tmpl >$(2).txt endef all: $(call generate_file,John Doe,101) $(call generate_file,Peter Pan,102) Contents of greetings.tmpl: Hello {NAME} This is how you exec