this is my makefile piece of code I would like to understand better why it does NOT work:
.PHONY: main_rule
main_rule: export MAIN=1
main_rule: main_prereq
... some stuff here ...
.PHONY: main_prereq
main_prereq: $(if $(filter 1,$(MAIN)),true_cond,false_cond)
..... other stuff here ...
.PHONY: true_cond
true_cond:
..... other stuff here ...
.PHONY: false_cond
false_cond:
..... other stuff here ...
My problem in on the "export MAIN=1". I suppose that the main_prereq was able to execute true_cond, instead it is not exported to the pre-requisite list.
The reason I am using the export is because main_prereq can be called by other rules, so I need something to differentiate the execution (true_cond only for main, else false_cond for all the others).
Even if you have better solutions for my problem , I kindly ask to you to help me to understand why it does not work (I think I didn't catch all the makefile philosophy).
To cite from the GNUmake manual:
A rule is always expanded the same way, regardless of the form:
immediate : immediate ; deferred
deferred
The second immediate refers to the prerequisite list - this one is evaluated in the first phase (the second phase is the "execution" phase where the recipes are run for real, existing targets) for normal rules, therefore the value of $(MAIN) is not set at the time make evaluates the filter expression - target specific variables are set only during the second phase. In your case SECONDEXPANSION should do the trick:
.PHONY: main_rule
main_rule: export MAIN=1
main_rule: main_prereq
... some stuff here ...
.SECONDEXPANSION: # from here on all rules will be expanded a second time
# all $-denoted values will be evaluated the first time,
# so we need to quote $$ everything we want to have evaluated
# only the second way round
.PHONY: main_prereq
main_prereq: $$(if $$(filter 1,$$(MAIN)),true_cond,false_cond)
..... other stuff here ...
.PHONY: true_cond
true_cond:
..... other stuff here ...
.PHONY: false_cond
false_cond:
..... other stuff here ...
Related
Given a Makefile:
all: build/a build/b build/c # need to change this to all: build/*
build/a:
...
build/b:
...
build/c:
...
I would like to change the all target to automatically build all targets that match build/*. This question seems to be very similar, except that it prints the result rather than acts on it. Also, I am not sure if that answer will work on both Linux & Mac.
Make has no such functionality built-in. And, in fact, keeping the list of the targets up-to-date manually is much cleaner and easier than any alternative solution. Personally, I'd probably start with something like this:
# second expansion is needed to get the value of
# $(targets) after the whole file was preprocessed
.SECONDEXPANSION:
all: $$(targets)
targets += build/a
build/a:
...
targets += build/b
build/b:
...
targets += build/c
build/c:
...
I don't believe that the requirement to add a single line per target (targets+=xxx) could be so annoying for you.
However, this is how we can "preprocess" Makefile ourselves:
# assume all targets are explicitly defined in Makefile
targets != grep -o '^ *build/\w* *:' Makefile | sed 's/^ *//;s/ *:$$//'
all: $(targets)
build/a:
...
build/b:
...
build/c:
...
Of course, this would fail if targets are in the included files, or contain substitutions, etc. However, it works for "simple cases".
I have a makefile that looks something like this:
include anotherFile.mk
all:
someStuff
The file anotherFile.mk is like this:
include yetAnotherFile.mk
export SOME_VAR = 93
The problem is that anotherFile.mk and yetAnotherFile.mk are in a different directory from my Makefile. So my makefile can't just be changed to this:
include $(OTHER_PROJECT_PATH)/anotherFile.mk
all:
someStuff
The problem with this approach is that the include statement in anotherFile.mk will fail because it will be searching in the current directory.
A partial solution that I found is to pass the --include-dir=$OTHER_PROJECT_PATH flag to the invocation of make, but that's a bit user-unfriendly.
So my question is: Is there something I can put inside my makefile that will add to the directories that make searches for when executing an include? Something like MAKE_INCLUDE_DIRS += $(OTHER_PROJECT_PATH)
Surprisingly there doesn't seem to be a good answer to that question. Forcing .INCLUDE_DIR doesn't help and there doesn't seem to be any way around invoking make with --include-dir=$OTHER_PROJECT_PATH.
It is however possible to put the appropriate recursive make invocation inside the makefile but, in order to get it to work for all reasonable cases it quickly becomes too complicated to be worth it. In summary it requires:
a top level condition to check if the OTHER_PROJECT_PATH is in .INCLUDE_DIR
the appropriate target with the recipe invoking make recursively
possibly additional targets if there are multiple command goals
the real make file enclosed in the else part of the conditional
You Makefile would look like this:
OTHER_PROJECT_PATH := other
ifeq (,$(filter $(OTHER_PROJECT_PATH), $(.INCLUDE_DIRS)))
# this is the mechanism to add the include dir in a recursive make
$(or $(firstword $(MAKECMDGOALS)),all):
$(MAKE) -I$(OTHER_PROJECT_PATH) $(MAKECMDGOALS)
# add empty targets for additional goals if needed
ifneq (,$(wordlist 2,$(words $(MAKECMDGOALS)),$(MAKECMDGOALS)))
$(wordlist 2,$(words $(MAKECMDGOALS)),$(MAKECMDGOALS)):
endif
else
# this is where the real makefile starts
all more:
echo $#: $< $^
include a.mak
endif
It still does not seem possible from a makefile, but if you have a script that sets up environment variables, you can use MAKEFLAGS (e.g. export MAKEFLAGS=I/your/path ordentlich on Linux, or SET on Windows)
I would like to make a complete text document from several sources (since one of the file source change, I want the doc to change).
I have to pass it through a translator I develop. I would like to pass the language as argument, to make it cleaner.
Yesterday, late at night, I dreamed of a makefile like this...
#makefile
# ...
my_complete_doc.%.html: my_trans_exe header.%.html $(wildcard source/*.%.html)
$< --language $(variable_for_%) > $#
(?) Does it replace % by all the languages which have their own header.language.html files. And does the file my_completed_doc.language.html get changed as soon as one of the source/*.language.html get changed?
(?) How to get the % replaced in several prerequisites, possibly into the wildcard and necessarily in the recipe?
First, the easy problem: you wish to use the '%' variable in the recipe. The answer is to use the '$*' automatic variable:
my_complete_doc.%.html: my_trans_exe ...
$< --language $* > $#
Then the easy question: yes, the header.%.html prerequisite is correct. When you try to build my_complete_doc.dutch.html then Make will evaluate it as header.dutch.html, when you try to build my_complete_doc.french.html, Make will evaluate it as header.french.html.
Now the tricky problem: the prerequisite $(wildcard source/*.%.html). Ordinarily, Make expands $(wildcard ...) statements before executing any rule, or deciding which targets to build. So it searches for any files such as source/foo.%.html or source/bar.%.html (that is, files whose names contain the character '%'), finds none, and evaluates the statement as an empty string. But Make will defer this evaluation until it has chosen the rule, if you use SECONDEXPANSION:
.SECONDEXPANSION:
my_complete_doc.%.html: my_trans_exe header.%.html $$(wildcard source/*.%.html)
$< --language $* > $#
(Note the '$$'. In the first -- ordinary -- expansion, Make reduces "$$(...)" to "$(...)", and in the second -- when '%' has a value -- it expands "$(...)".) Now if you modify any file such as source/foo.german.html, Make will consider the file my_complete_doc.german.html out of date and in need of rebuilding.
I use make to execute a series of process steps. Each step depends on the success of the previous one. Once completed a step, I touch a file with the name of the step into a separate directory.
Here is one example to explain the concept:
VPATH=steps
step1:
#echo "do some actions with $#"
#touch $(VAPTH)/$#
step2: step1
#echo "do some actions with $#"
#touch $(VPATH)/$#
step3: step2
#echo "do some actions with $#"
#touch $(VPATH)/$#
It basically works, however there is a weakness: it checks for targets either in "." and in VPATH. If you erroneously touch ./step1 in the working directory "." make gets confused. I'd like to know if I can avoid any ambiguity on checking the targets/prerequisites, but I'd like to keep using
make step3
and not
make steps/step3
Any other Makefile example to get the same objective is welcome. Thanks in advance for the help!
A fundamental rule of makefiles is that you cannot create targets that are different from what makes thinks they should be. Make puts the name of the target that it wants you to build in the $# variable. Your rule must create a target with that name, or make will not work properly. In your example you're creating a target with the name $(VPATH)/$# which is not the same as $#, so that's not right.
Another rule of makefiles is that VPATH cannot be used (correctly) to find derived targets. It can only be used to find source files.
I recommend you change the variable name from VPATH to something like STEPDIR, just to avoid confusion. Then you can write a makefile like this (note this is untested and may need to be tweaked). Look up Static Pattern Rules in the GNU make manual to understand what I'm doing in the commented part:
STEPDIR := steps
STEPS := step1 step2 step3
# Translate from local to subdirectory
.PHONY: $(STEPS)
$(STEPS): %: $(STEPDIR)/%
$(STEPDIR)/step1:
#...
#touch $#
$(STEPDIR)/step2: $(STEPDIR)/step1
#...
#touch $#
$(STEPDIR)/step1: $(STEPDIR)/step2
#...
#touch $#
I have to convert a set of file (let's say format fa) into another format (fb) by a command (fa2fb). Each target fb depends only on one fa file.
Data structure is in a format like this:
source:
./DATA/L1/fa/L1.fa
./DATA/L2/fa/L2.fa
...
./DATA/Ln/fa/Ln.fa
target:
./DATA/L1/fb/L1.fb
./DATA/L2/fb/L2.fb
...
./DATA/Ln/fb/Ln.fb
How can I implement it with make?
I have tried this but of course it did not work:
./DATA/%/fb/%.fb : ./DATA/%/fa/%.fb
#fa2fb $< $#
Is there any simple solution without changing the data directories?
Many thanks!
Use secondary expansion and the subst function to create a rule where the prerequisites are constructed as a more complex function of the target name:
.SECONDEXPANSION:
DATA/%.fb: $$(subst fb,fa,$$#)
#fa2fb $< $#
Note that this approach assumes that fb will not occur anywhere else in the filename (which holds true if all of your filenames are of the form DATA/Ln/fb/Ln.fb, for some integer n).
This may be the sloppiest makefile I have ever written.
define template
$(2) : $(1)
echo hi
endef
sources=DATA/L1/fa/L1.fa DATA/L2/fa/L2.fa
$(foreach source,$(sources),$(eval $(call template,$(source),$(subst /fa/,/fb/,$(subst .fa,.fb,$(source))))))
The idea is to define a macro to generate your rules, then use foreach and eval+call to invoke it once for each source. The source is the first argument to the call, so it becomes $(1) in the macro. The second argument is just the transformation from a source file name to a destination file name; it becomes $(2) in the macro.
Replace echo hi with your own rule and you should be good to go. And be sure to write a nice big clear comment or someday someone will surely show up at your door with a baseball bat.
This is basically the same as Nemo's answer. I just tried to make the foreach call a bit more readable, by creating a list of modules, containing simply L1 L2 ... Ln, instead of the list of full source names.
MODULES := $(notdir $(wildcard ./DATA/L*))
define rule
./DATA/$(1)/fb/$(1).fb: ./DATA/$(1)/fa/$(1).fa
#fa2fb $< $#
endef
$(foreach module, $(MODULES), $(eval $(call rule,$(module))))