Impose an order for the prerequisites of a target - makefile

I have a makefile snippet:
all: $(objects)
fresh: clean all
clean: ;rm $(objects)
Here, I want to ensure that when I do make fresh - clean should precede all.
But how can I make sure this, given that when I do make all, clean should not be made?
I can imagine that one way could be like this
fresh: clean
make all
Is it the right (or the only) way to solve this issue?

If you use GNU make:
all:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
clean:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
fresh:: clean
fresh:: all
.PHONY: clean fresh all
Please note the double colon after targets fresh! See the documentation:
The double-colon rules for a target are executed in the order they
appear in the makefile.
If you run make -j2 fresh it shows it works as expect:
clean
end clean
all
end all
But with fresh:: clean all doesn't work properly parallel (maybe unexpected).
With BSD make:
all:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
clean:
#echo $#
#sleep 1
#echo end $#
fresh: clean all
#echo $#
.ORDER: clean all
.PHONY: clean all fresh
Note the line begin with .ORDER. It works well in parallelization too (see man make). Without parallelization the order of dependencies in line fresh: counts.

As you already suggest in your question, calling make recursively on the same makefile for the target all in a recipe whose prerequisite is clean:
# At the very beginning of the makefile
CURRENT_MAKEFILE := $(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST))
# ...
.PHONY: fresh
fresh: clean
$(MAKE) -f $(CURRENT_MAKEFILE) all
This imposes an order, since the target fresh depends on the prerequisite clean, clean's recipe will be executed before fresh's recipe, which in turn will execute all's recipe.
Note that I'm using here $(MAKE) instead of make for the recursion.

Related

GNU Make Skipping Straight to Linking

I have a makefile that for various reasons relies on a supporting python script to run every time and grab files from several external locations, copy into working directory, and run through a separate preprocessor before compiling.
This makefile must be able to be run in parallel (-j8) so the order of processing cannot be guaranteed.
In trying to explicitly specify prerequisites, I have created a situation where make skips all object files, goes straight to linking, and fails because the necessary objects do not exist. On a second run, all the objects already exist (the preprocess step skips the files that already exist) and all the files are compiled and linked properly.
When run without -j# everything works fine, but the moment I add -j2, the skipping begins.
Following is an example make file:
GEN_FILES := file1.cpp file2.cpp file3.cpp
CXX_FILES := bin_main.cpp $(GEN_FILES)
OBJ_FILES := $(patsubst %.cpp,%.o,$(CXX_FILES))
.PHONY : all clean prepare
all : bin_file
prepare :
# Copy and preprocess all source files
[ -f file1.cpp ] || cp d1/file1.cpp .
[ -f file2.cpp ] || cp d2/file2.cpp .
[ -f file3.cpp ] || cp d3/file3.cpp .
$(OBJ_FILES) : prepare
bin_file : $(OBJ_FILES)
[ -f file1.o ] && [ -f file2.o ] && [ -f file3.o ] && touch bin_file
%.o : %.cpp
#echo "Compiling $<..."
[ -f $< ] && touch $#
clean :
$(RM) *.o
$(RM) file*
$(RM) bin_file
How can I get this to build in one go, first running prepare to collect all files and then compiling and linking as necessary?
As code_fodder mentions the issue is the creation of the source files.
Basically what happens is, you have not told make how to create these source files, so as far as make knows they don't exist and there's no way to create them. So when make wants to build, for example, file1.o it looks at your pattern rule and finds it could build file1.o from file1.cpp. So then it looks for how to build file1.cpp. No file1.cpp exists, and there is no rule that make knows of that will build it, so make ignores that pattern rule as not matching.
Then make sees the target:
$(OBJ_FILES) : prepare
so it thinks there's no recipe needed to create the object files, and just runs the link line. The next time through, make sees the prepared source files (from the previous build) and then it can use your pattern rule.
If you change your pattern rule to a static pattern rule, where you explicitly tell make exactly what rule to use instead of providing it with a possible rule to use that it can ignore if it doesn't match (which is what a pattern rule is), you'll see the error:
$(OBJ_FILES): %.o : %.cpp
#echo "Compiling $<..."
sleep 1
[ -f $< ] && touch $#
will tell you:
make: *** No rule to make target 'file1.cpp', needed by 'file1.o'. Stop.
Remember, make is looking for a matching pattern rule BEFORE it actually builds anything: it doesn't want to build every possible prerequisite of every possible matching pattern rule, to decide whether or not at the end of it the rule can be used. The rule is matched based on the current state of the filesystem plus rules you have given make about changes it could make. Make has no idea that if it were to invoke the prepare target the source files it was looking for would magically come into existence.
Your basic problem is that this statement is the wrong dependency relationship:
$(OBJ_FILES) : prepare
It's not really true that the object files depend on prepare; what's true is that the PREPARED SOURCE FILES depend on prepare. The object files depend only the "prepared" source files, as your pattern rules shows. This rule should be written, instead:
$(GEN_FILES): prepare
If you do this with -j everything will wait as you want.
Yeah, this gets messy / difficult. The problem you have is that you can specify prerequisite lists - that can work in order, but as soon as you start to use -j then make can start processing prerequisites in any old order. So bin_file requires $(OBJ_FILES) which require prepare. Then %.o requires the same named %.cpp file - which it can do for main.o, but not the filex.o since they don't exist yet - but it tries anyway and fails - in the mean time make (in parallel) is potentially starting to generate the .cpp files, but by this time its too late...etc...
My Prerequisites Build Pattern
I use a very specific prerequisites pattern of my own design - some might frown upon - but I have carefully considered this over the years and found it to be optimal for me.
I create a rule called build or something - which requires build_prerequisites target and then calls make to do the actual build once this is complete:
.PHONY: build
build: build_prerequisites
build:
#echo "start_build"
#$(MAKE) bin_file
This means that build_prerequisites is always run first before the recipe runs. You cant seem to achieve the same forcing of order (at least not easily) using just dependencies. I.e. a list of dependencies can be run in any order with -j, but the rule recipe is always run last.
Now we have this pattern we can fill in the rest. First the build_prerequisites target which does your file generation - I am using echo in my example because I don't have your python script:
.PHONY: build_prerequisites
build_prerequisites:
#echo "build_prerequisites"
echo "create file1" > file1.cpp
echo "create file2" > file2.cpp
echo "create file3" > file3.cpp
Finally add in the c++ compile and link stages - these will be run with the single recursive make call from build - i.e. $(MAKE) bin_file (again I am using echo to create the files in my example):
%.o : %.cpp
#echo "compiling: $<"
##echo "$(CXX) $(SRC_INCLUDES) $(LIB_INCLUDES) $(CXXFLAGS) -c $< -o $#"
#echo "touch" > $#
bin_file : $(OBJ_FILES)
#echo "linking: $<"
#echo $(CXX) $(SRC_INCLUDES) $^ $(LIB_INCLUDES) $(LDFLAGS) -o $#
#echo "touch" > $#
Output
Here is the output from my test program (using echo) and main.cpp already exists usingn -j10:
make -j10
build_prerequisites
echo "create file1" > file1.cpp
echo "create file2" > file2.cpp
echo "create file3" > file3.cpp
start_build
make[1]: Entering directory '/mnt/d/software/ubuntu/make'
compile: bin_main.cpp
compile: file1.cpp
compile: file2.cpp
compile: file3.cpp
link: bin_main.o
g++ bin_main.o file1.o file2.o file3.o -o bin_file
make[1]: Leaving directory '/mnt/d/software/ubuntu/make'
Note: if I put a sleep 1 in the "compile" rule - this still takes only 1 second for all 4 files to compile.
Put it all together
GEN_FILES := file1.cpp file2.cpp file3.cpp
CXX_FILES := bin_main.cpp $(GEN_FILES)
OBJ_FILES := $(patsubst %.cpp,%.o,$(CXX_FILES))
###### STAGE 1
.PHONY: build
build: build_prerequisites
build:
#echo "start_build"
#$(MAKE) bin_file
.PHONY: build_prerequisites
build_prerequisites:
#echo "build_prerequisites"
copy_and_pp_files.py $(CXX_FILES) $(SEARCH_DIRS) .
copy_and_pp_files.py $(CFG_FILES) $(SEARCH_DIRS) .
###### STAGE 2
%.o : %.cpp
#echo "compiling: $<"
#$(CXX) $(SRC_INCLUDES) $(LIB_INCLUDES) $(CXXFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
bin_file : $(OBJ_FILES)
#echo "linking: $<"
#$(CXX) $(SRC_INCLUDES) $^ $(LIB_INCLUDES) $(LDFLAGS) -o $#
###### OTHER RULES
.PHONY: clean
clean :
#$(RM) *.o
#$(RM) file*
I have attempted to use your actual code, but I have no way to test this so there may be a bug in there. I split it up into 2 "stages" for clarity. Stage 1 is done in your makeor make build call, then state 2 is done in the recursive make call in the build recipe.

Makefile skips dependency

I've created a makefile for my little project
.SUFFIXES:
%.cpp:
$(COMP) -c -o $(subst .cpp,.o,$#) $(SRCDIR)$# $(CFLAGS)
platformL: COMP:=gcc
platformL: $(FILES)
$(COMP) -o $(NAME) $(subst .cpp,.o,$(FILES)) $(CFLAGS)
rm $(subst .cpp,.o,$(FILES))
platformW: COMP:=wine gcc
platformW: $(FILES)
$(COMP) -o $(NAME).exe $(subst .cpp,.o,$(FILES)) $(CFLAGS)
rm $(subst .cpp,.o,$(FILES))
default: platformL platformW
echo Done!
Everything worked fine until I branched to 2 different platforms, 'make' command executes only my platformL branch. After spending some time with it I discovered that adding '.PHONY' won't fix the problem. Also, it appears that only the first branch from the top gets executed (I have put the lines of platformW before platformL and only Windows compilation was performed).
How can I make it execute both branches?
Make always builds the first explicit target (and all prerequisites of the first explicit target) in the makefile, by default. That's all it will build by default.
You can either specify multiple things to build on the command line, like make platformL platformW, or you can add a new first target that depends on all the other targets you want built. By tradition that target is named all but you can call it whatever you want:
all: platformL platformW
.PHONY: all
...
platformL: ...
...
platformW: ...

Run make in each subdirectory

I have a directory (root_dir), that contains a number of sub-directories (subdir1, subdir2, ...).
I want to run the make in each directory in root_dir, using a Makefile placed in it.
(Obviously supposed that each of subdir... has inside its own Makefile).
So there are essentially two questions:
How to get a list of directories in Makefile (automatically)?
How to run make for each of the directories inside a make file?
As I know in order to run make in a specific directory I need to do the following:
$(MAKE) -C subdir
There are various problems with doing the sub-make inside a for loop in a single recipe. The best way to do multiple subdirectories is like this:
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
all: $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
$(MAKE) -C $#
.PHONY: all $(SUBDIRS)
(Just to point out this is GNU make specific; you didn't mention any restrictions on the version of make you're using).
ETA Here's a version which supports multiple top-level targets.
TOPTARGETS := all clean
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
$(TOPTARGETS): $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)
.PHONY: $(TOPTARGETS) $(SUBDIRS)
Try this :
SUBDIRS = foo bar baz
subdirs:
for dir in $(SUBDIRS); do \
$(MAKE) -C $$dir; \
done
This may help you link
Edit : you can also do :
The simplest way is to do:
CODE_DIR = code
.PHONY: project_code
project_code:
$(MAKE) -C $(CODE_DIR)
The .PHONY rule means that project_code is not a file that needs to be
built, and the -C flag indicates a change in directory (equivalent to
running cd code before calling make). You can use the same approach
for calling other targets in the code Makefile.
For example:
clean:
$(MAKE) -C $(CODE_DIR) clean
Source
This is another approach to MadScientist's answer. .PHONY is a GNU-specific feature that can be used to force make into recursing into each subdirectory. However, some non-GNU versions of make do not support .PHONY, so an alternative is a force target.
4.7 Rules without Recipes or Prerequisites
If a rule has no prerequisites or recipe, and the target of the rule
is a nonexistent file, then make imagines this target to have been
updated whenever its rule is run. This implies that all targets
depending on this one will always have their recipe run.
An example will illustrate this:
clean: FORCE
rm $(objects)
FORCE:
Here the target ‘FORCE’ satisfies the special conditions, so the
target clean that depends on it is forced to run its recipe. There is
nothing special about the name ‘FORCE’, but that is one name commonly
used this way.
As you can see, using ‘FORCE’ this way has the same results as using
‘.PHONY: clean’.
Using ‘.PHONY’ is more explicit and more efficient. However, other
versions of make do not support ‘.PHONY’; thus ‘FORCE’ appears in many
makefiles. See Phony Targets.
The following is a minimal example that recurses make into each subdirectory, each of which presumably contains a Makefile. If you simply run make, only the first subdirectory, which is non-deterministic, is processed. You may also run make subdir1 subdir2 ....
# Register all subdirectories in the project's root directory.
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
# Recurse `make` into each subdirectory.
$(SUBDIRS): FORCE
$(MAKE) -C $#
# A target without prerequisites and a recipe, and there is no file named `FORCE`.
# `make` will always run this and any other target that depends on it.
FORCE:
Here is another example with top-level phony targets: all and clean. Note that the all and clean targets, passed from command-line via $(MAKECMDGOALS), are handled by each subdirectory's all and clean targets respectively.
# Register all subdirectories in the project's root directory.
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
# Top-level phony targets.
all clean: $(SUBDIRS) FORCE
# Similar to:
# .PHONY: all clean
# all clean: $(SUBDIRS)
# GNU's .PHONY target is more efficient in that it explicitly declares non-files.
# Recurse `make` into each subdirectory
# Pass along targets specified at command-line (if any).
$(SUBDIRS): FORCE
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)
# Force targets.
FORCE:
You can also define a function in the Makefile (also you of course need an additional makefile in each subdirectory). This is shell-dependent, but can be useful:
define FOREACH
for DIR in packages/*; do \
$(MAKE) -C $$DIR $(1); \
done
endef
.PHONY: build
build:
$(call FOREACH,build)
.PHONY: clean
clean:
$(call FOREACH,clean)
.PHONY: test
test:
$(call FOREACH,test)
Only a small icing on the cake after MadScientist's answer in order to make all the individual targets in the sub-directories available from the top level (you will need to have the SUBDIRS variable defined in order to use the following snippet – you can use MadScientist's answer for that):
# Make all the individual targets in the sub-directories available from the top
# level; as in, for instance, `make foo/my_program` or `make bar/clean`
$(foreach __dir__,$(SUBDIRS),$(__dir__)/%):
#$(MAKE) -C '$(#D)' '$(#F)'
With the code above you can run, for instance,
make foo/my_program
or
make bar/clean
Furthermore, by pasting the code above you can even use an individual target from a sub-directory as a prerequisite for a target in the top level. For example:
my_target: my_subdirectory/my_prerequisite
'my_subdirectory/my_prerequisite' > 'my_target'
…With the example above, launching make my_target from the top level will first build the my_subdirectory/my_prerequisite program, then the latter will be run for building the my_target file.
Since I was not aware of the MAKECMDGOALS variable and overlooked that MadScientist has its own implementation of multiple top-level targets, I wrote an alternative implementation. Maybe someone find it useful.
SUBDIRS := $(wildcard */.)
define submake
for d in $(SUBDIRS); \
do \
$(MAKE) $(1) --directory=$$d; \
done
endef
all:
$(call submake,$#)
install:
$(call submake,$#)
.PHONY: all install $(SUBDIRS)
There is a library called prorab for GNU make which supports inclusion of standalone makefiles in subdirectories.
Some info on github: https://github.com/cppfw/prorab/blob/master/wiki/HomePage.adoc
Basically, with prorab invoking all makefiles in subdirectories looks like this:
include prorab.mk
$(eval $(prorab-build-subdirs))
In reference to https://stackoverflow.com/posts/17845120/revisions
This is what I learned from that post.
Top Level Makefile
# set the default goal.
# I want the default to really just dump contents of dirs
# as a stub. For instance, I don't want it to
# push code or
.DEFAULT_GOAL := deploy
TOPTARGETS := all clean
SUBDIRS := docs src
$(TOPTARGETS): $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
echo "make arg is" $(MAKECMDGOALS)
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)
SUBCLEAN = $(addsuffix .clean,$(SUBDIRS))
clean: $(SUBCLEAN)
$(SUBCLEAN): %.clean:
$(MAKE) -C $* clean
deploy:
echo do deploy stub
The src/ and docs/ common to this Makefile directory, all have a corresponding Makefile.
Here is an example of the docs setup:
# set the default goal.
.DEFAULT_GOAL := list_docs
list_docs:
ls -l
clean:
echo "docs: make clean"
-rm "*.backup"
I did this a little different than any of the answers because I didn't want to have to define each possible make target
SUBDIRS := $(patsubst %/,%,$(wildcard */))
.PHONY: all $(MAKECMDGOALS) $(SUBDIRS)
$(MAKECMDGOALS) all: $(SUBDIRS)
$(SUBDIRS):
$(MAKE) -C $# $(MAKECMDGOALS)

How do I make a makefile rule execute its prerequisites?

I have a makefile containing rules to build the system, tests, and run them. The last item is executed by just calling a shell script. Among other things, this prevents me from running the tests in parallel.
I have the following variables:
TEST_SRC=$(wildcard tests/*.c)
TESTS=$(patsubst %.c,%,${TEST_SRC})
and it builds the tests with the rule
$(TESTS): %: %.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) -o $# $<
Is it possible (and if so, how?) to create a rule "tests" that, when run, will execute each item in the $TESTS variable?
You could do it this way:
# a separate target to run each test
RUN_TESTS = $(addprefix run_, $(TESTS))
# a pattern rule for those targets, which will remake the test iff neccessary
.PHONY: $(RUN_TESTS)
$(RUN_TESTS):run_%:%
./$<
# One Rule to Ring Them All, One Rule to... sorry.
.PHONY: tests
tests: $(RUN_TESTS)
I believe that a rule like this:
run_tests: $(TESTS)
Should do the trick:
$ make run_tests
It will not execute anything, but it will have $(TESTS) as a dependency and run them first.

Pre-build step in makefile

How can I run a script, which must execute before all other makefile commands? And it will be nice (but not mandatory) to the script is not executed if there is nothing to build.
I've searched SO and Google, but can't find anything.
I have this workaround:
# myscript.bat output is empty
CHEAT_ARGUMENT = (shell myscript.bat)
CFLAGS += -DCHEAT_ARGUMENT=$(CHEAT_ARGUMENT)
AFLAGS += -DCHEAT_ARGUMENT=$(CHEAT_ARGUMENT)
But it's very ugly. Is there other way to run "pre-build step" in makefile?
I propose two solutions. The first mimics what NetBeans IDE generates:
CC=gcc
.PHONY: all clean
all: post-build
pre-build:
#echo PRE
post-build: main-build
#echo POST
main-build: pre-build
#$(MAKE) --no-print-directory target
target: $(OBJS)
$(CC) -o $# $(OBJS)
clean:
rm -f $(OBJS) target
The second one is inpired by what Eclipse IDE generates:
CC=gcc
.PHONY: all clean
.SECONDARY: main-build
all: pre-build main-build
pre-build:
#echo PRE
post-build:
#echo POST
main-build: target
target: $(OBJS)
$(CC) -o $# $(OBJS)
#$(MAKE) --no-print-directory post-build
clean:
rm -f $(OBJS) target
Note that in the first one, pre and post builds are always called regardless of whether the main build is determined to be up to date or not.
In the second one, the post-build step is not executed if the state of the main build is up to date. While the pre-build step is always executed in both.
Depending on your make version, something like the following should at least avoid running dozens of times if CFLAGS and AFLAGS are evaluated dozens of times:
CHEAT_ARG := $(shell myscript)
Note the colon.
This runs exactly once. Never more than once, but also never less than once. Choose your own tradeoffs.
You could add a special target to your Makefile and have all your build rules depend on that:
run-script:
myscript
.o.c: run-script
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $# $<
.o.S: run-script
$(AS) $(AFLAGS) -o $# $<
Depending on what your script actually does, putting it to run once in a stage before the Makefile (configure stage in autoconf terms) could make even more sense (and be less work).
What you are proposing seems a bit "un-make-like". Why not just run the command in whatever makefile target you need it to go before?
Example, if you need it to run before linking foo:
foo: ${OBJS}
my-command-goes-here
${CC} -o $# ${OBJS} ${LIBS}
Thank you for answers. ndim helped me much, asveikau. The final file is one binary executable, so I can use now something like this:
run-script:
myscript
$(AXF_FILE): run-script $(OBJ_DIRS) $(OBJ_FILES)
$(LINK) #......
It will run myscript once. {AXF_FILE} value depends on myscript and I must run it before. And in this case myscript runs always, not only when rebuild is needed.
After, The Simplest Answer came to my mind:
all: run-script $(AXF_FILE)
That's all ;) (Of course, any target can be used instead of "all")
Edit: this method execute script after $(AXF_FILE) is calculated too. So it's possible to get wrong value of AXF_FILE.
Now only the first answer by ndim works as I need.

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