Printing in Makefiles: @echo vs $(info )

What is the difference between these two commands in makefiles:

@echo "Hello World"
$(info Hello World)

As it seems, echo and info print the same output, so where is the difference? And when to use which one?

Well, echo is a shell command. So if you put it in a recipe, a shell will be invoked to run it and the shell command will generate the output:

info is a GNU make function. It is handled directly by make: no shell is invoked. It can appear anywhere in a makefile, not just in a recipe. It is not portable to other versions of make. Because no shell is invoked, there are no quoting issues.

How to print out a variable in makefile

As per the GNU Make manual and also pointed by 'bobbogo' in the below answer, you can use info / warning / error to display text.

$(error   text…)
$(warning text…)
$(info    text…)

To print variables,

$(error   VAR is $(VAR))
$(warning VAR is $(VAR))
$(info    VAR is $(VAR))

'error' would stop the make execution, after showing the error string