Next Previous Contents

An introduction to Makefiles

Garrett Mitchener, `wgm2@acpub.duke.edu`

January 19, 1999

The make program on Unix is great for managing compiled projects. It allows you to specify which files are created from which others, and what commands to run to update the created files when the ones they depend on are changed. This document has a lot of information which is specific to the GNU project's implementation of make. On the acpub and cs computer systems, it is run by typing gmake to avoid confusion with the Solaris make program.

1. A sample makefile and how it works

1.1 The short answer
1.2 Comments
1.3 Continuing long lines
1.4 Macros
1.5 Special $ commands
1.6 Basic dependency rules
1.7 Special dependency rules
1.8 Special macros
1.9 Suffix rules

2. Lots of tips

2.1 Automating dependency creation
2.2 Troubleshooting

3. A more complicated sample makefile