I have two sets of source files in my project from which I need to generate object files.
SET_ONE = foo.o bar.o
SET_TWO = zerz.o zork.o
I want to pass add an extra option to CFLAGS when building the files in SET_ONE but not for those in SET_TWO. For example, I want:
> make -n
cc -c -DEXTRA_FLAG foo.c
cc -c -DEXTRA_FLAG bar.c
cc -c zerz.c
cc -c zork.c
...
Since the files have the same extension, the same rule applies to all of them, and I don't see a straightforward way to tweak CFLAGS for just the ones in one of the sets.
I could make custom rules for the files in SET_ONE:
foo.o : foo.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -DEXTRA_FLAG foo.c
bar.o : bar.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -DEXTRA_FLAG bar.c
but that leads to repetition, which will be harder to maintain. Is there a cleaner way to do this? It's probably been a decade since I hacked on a makefile.
There are a number of ways to do it. The most straightforward uses target-specific variables; add to your makefile:
$(SET_ONE): CFLAGS += -DEXTRA_FLAG
Related
In a makefile, suppose I have two corresponding dependency and target lists, like this:
SRC = x.c y.c z.c
OBJS = x.o y.o z.o
Of course, my example is more complicated than this, but I want to know if it is possible to automatically create targets x.o, y.o, z.o depending on x.c, y.c, z.c respectively, like this:
x.o: x.c
y.o: y.c
z.o: z.c
I think the question was how to create rules for each of these targets, not how to create OBJS from SRC (although it's good to do that!).
The simplest way is to use the already-built-in rule in make that knows how to do it; you don't need to write your own. Just use:
all: $(OBJS)
and they'll all be created. You can control the compiler by setting the CC variable, the preprocessor flags by setting the CPPFLAGS variable, and the other compiler flags by setting the CFLAGS variable.
If you DO really want to write your own rule, then pattern rules will do that for you easily:
%.o : %.c
$(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $# $<
You can use substitution references:
OBJS = $(SRC:.c=.o)
or patsubst:
OBJS = $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(SRC))
I am new to using make and have been learning the basics through this tutorial. Here is the final example makefile example from the tutorial:
IDIR =../include
CC=gcc
CFLAGS=-I$(IDIR)
ODIR=obj
LDIR =../lib
LIBS=-lm
_DEPS = hellomake.h
DEPS = $(patsubst %,$(IDIR)/%,$(_DEPS))
_OBJ = hellomake.o hellofunc.o
OBJ = $(patsubst %,$(ODIR)/%,$(_OBJ))
$(ODIR)/%.o: %.c $(DEPS)
$(CC) -c -o $# $< $(CFLAGS)
hellomake: $(OBJ)
gcc -o $# $^ $(CFLAGS) $(LIBS)
.PHONY: clean
clean:
rm -f $(ODIR)/*.o *~ core $(INCDIR)/*~
This should work fine assuming all .c files are only including hellomake.h, but it wouldn't work if each .c file was including different headers. Is it possible to write a makefile that knows what each .c file is including, so I don't have to go in and do it manually like:
foo.o: foo.c something.h
...
bar.o: bar.c somethingelse.h
...
because that seems like it would be a big waste of time.
Suppose foo.c has a line:
#include "something.h"
You'd like a line in the makefile:
foo.o: foo.c something.h
The gcc compiler can construct that line for you. The command
gcc -MMD -c -o foo.o foo.c
will build foo.o and foo.d which contains the line. (Try it.)
So just modify your makefile to produce these *.d files and include them, and you're done:
$(ODIR)/%.o: %.c $(DEPS)
$(CC) -MMD -c -o $# $< $(CFLAGS)
-include $(ODIR)/*.d
(Further refinements are possible, like specifying where the *.d files should go.)
Traditional makes are rather limited and force you to do all that basic stuff yourself. If you rightly expect a build tool to find dependencies and know what to link, try makepp. You may not need a makefile at all, or just a minimal one like
CFLAGS = -O3
myprog: # just a default target to know what to build
The linking part would require a little help on your side, in that it is based on source-header pairs. If myprog.cpp includes a.h and b.hpp it'll look if it can build a.o and/or b.o, and if so, will link them and recursively check what their sources include.
You will only need to learn more make syntax, if you have more complex requirements. But if you do, there is no limit. Besides doing almost all that GNU make can, there are lots more useful things, and you can even extend your makefiles with some Perl programming.
Yes, the "MMD" flag will help you to generate ".d" file (dependency) files. If you include at end of your Makefile( -include *.d ) and then if you make any change in .h file, the respective .o file, will rebuild.
Take this as reference:
https://github.com/saanvijay/makefile-skeleton
There's a minor limitation to #Beta's answer which can be fixed pretty easily.
Say you have a file main.c which includes header.h. You build this, and your main.d file looks like this:
main.o: main.c header.h
Then you delete header.h and its corresponding include in main.c. The program is valid and should compile fine, but make fails due to the above rule, which has a dependency on a now-nonexistent file.
To fix this, you need main.o to depend on main.d, and a rule to create main.d.
main.d: main.c
$(CC) -MM -o main.d main.c
include main.d
This splits the generation of the .d file into a separate step, and make is smart enough to know that since it includes main.d, it should be rebuilt before it is included. This would fix the above issue. More info in the docs.
One issue with this approach is that make will rebuild the .d file when it's not needed, e.g. when running make clean. In these cases, you can just disable the include like in this answer. I'm interested to know if there is a smarter way to do this.
The complete Makefile would look something like this:
main.d: main.c
$(CC) -MM -o main.d main.c
main.o: main.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS) -o main.o main.c
main: main.o:
$(CC) main.o -o main $(LDLIBS)
.PHONY: clean
clean:
rm main.o main.d
ifneq ($(MAKECMDGOALS),clean)
include main.d
endif
I am talking about this question where the person has updated his final solution with a makefile for the task. I am having a hard time understanding how it's done.
There is a rule:
$(OBJECTS): $(OBJDIR)/%.o : $(SRCDIR)/%.c
#$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
which I am unable to understand, but by intuition I know what it will be doing. Almost everything else is pretty much clear. Thanks!
This is a static pattern rule. The first field is a list of targets, the second is a target pattern which Make uses to isolate a target's "stem", the third is the prerequisite pattern which Make uses to construct the list of prerequisites.
Suppose you have
SRCDIR = src
OBJDIR = obj
OBJECTS = obj/foo.o obj/bar.o obj/baz.o
$(OBJECTS): $(OBJDIR)/%.o : $(SRCDIR)/%.c
#$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
If you make obj/foo.o, Make first identifies this rule as the one to use (since obj/foo.o is in the target list $(OBJECTS)), matches it against the target pattern obj/%.o and finds that the stem (the part matched by the wildcard %) is foo, then plugs that into the prereq pattern src/%.c and finds that the prerequisite is src/foo.c.
If you've also defined the variables
CC = gcc
CFLAGS = -thisflag -thatflag=something
Then the command in the rule becomes
#gcc -thisflag -thatflag=something -c src/foo.c -o obj/foo.o
(Note that $< is the first prerequisite and $# is the target name.)
In answer to your other question: Yes, a makefile can handle a dependency on a header file (x.h) so that if the header has been modified, Make will rebuild the target. No, this makefile doesn't do that. You can modify the makefile by hand, adding rules like
a.o: x.h
assuming you know what the inclusions actually are, or you can have the makefile do it automatically, which is an advanced technique you probably shouldn't attempt yet.
This line is explaining how to obtain the object files (.o) from the source (.c), it avoids having to repeat the line for each .c file.
The objects will be in OBJDIR and the sources in SRCDIR
$(CC) will contain the compiler, CFLAGS will contain the options for the compiler and -c tells gcc to compile the source into objects.
For example:
CC = gcc
CFLAGS = -g -Wall
can be converted into
gcc -g -Wall -c test.c -o test.o
i need to build the same source tree twice,
1 - with normal cflags to build the project binary
2 - with cflags plus -fPIC to build a static library that would be some sort of SDK to develop project dynamic modules.
Using only one Makefile, what is the best approach to accomplish this?
It would be nice to do some sort of :
all: $(OBJECTS)
lib_rule: $(OBJECTS)
CFLAGS += -fPIC
.cpp.o:
$(CC) -c $< -o $# $(CFLAGS)
But obviously it can't be done.
Thanks
One thing I've used in the past is a different extension:
.cpp.o:
$(CC) -c $< -o $# $(CFLAGS)
.cpp.lo:
$(CC) -c $< -o $# $(CFLAGS) $(EXTRA_CFLAGS)
You then build your static library from the .lo files and you binary from the .o files:
prog: a.o b.o
libsdk.a: a.lo b.lo
Assuming you are using GNU Make, you can use some built in functions to only have to maintain the list of objects one time:
OBJS = a.o b.o
LOBJS = $(patsubst %.o, %.lo, $(OBJS))
GNU make offers also "Target-specific Variable Values". Consider the following Makefile:
# Makefile
CFLAGS := My Cflags
all: $(OBJECTS)
#echo "$# CFLAGS is: " $(CFLAGS)
lib_rule: CFLAGS += extended by -fPIC
lib_rule: $(OBJECTS)
#echo "$# CFLAGS is: " $(CFLAGS)
# Makefile - end.
$ make all
all CFLAGS is: My Cflags
$ make lib_rule
lib_rule CFLAGS is: My Cflags extended by -fPIC
$
(Please note: if you copy and paste the example, remember to re-add the tabstops in front of the command lines. I always get caught by that.)
Instead of placing the compiled .o files in the same directory as the source, I create them in labeled sub-directories. In your case, you can have the static library files created as source_dir/lib/*.o and your normal files as source_dir/bin/*.o. In your different build targets after you set up your unique CFLAGS, simply generate a DIR_NAME value holding the name of the appropriate sub-folder. You can use this variable when you create the paths for the compiler to use when building and when linking.
In a different make tool such as CMake, you can express something like that much more easily.
For instance, you could well do
set(sources ABC.cpp DEF.cpp XYZ.cpp)
ADD_LIBRARY(mylib STATIC ${sources})
add_executable(myExecutable ${sources} main.cpp)
Or, you could repeatedly build the same directory with different flags by including it several times from the directory's logical parent, i.e.
set(MyTweakFlag 2)
add_subdirectory("libDir" "libDir2")
set(MyTweakFlag 3)
add_subdirectory("libDir" "libDir3")
...and then use if() or whatnot in the child directory to set the right flags.
Particularly if you have many such configurations, using make becomes quite fragile; make won't correctly find the transitive closure of recursive make dependancies (and certainly won't correctly find the dependancy on the makefile itself - if you change flags, say) so if you're going to do complicated makefile magic: do it with a better tool!
(CMake simply happens to be what I replaced make with, but there are various other replacements possible, of course)
all. Let's say I have a program that contains a long list of C source files, A.c, B.c, ...., Z.c, now I want to compile A.c, B.c with certain CFLAGS, and compile the rest part of source files with a different CFLAGS value.
How to write a Makefile to do the above described job? currently what I am doing in my Makefile is:
OBJ=[all other .o files here, e.g. D.o, D.o, E.o .... Z.o]
SPECIAL_OBJS=A.o B.o
all: $(OBJ) $(SPECIAL_OBJS)
$(SPECIAL_OBJS):
#echo [Compiling]: $(#:.o=.c)
$(CC) [SOME OTHER GCC OPTIONS HERE] $(CFLAGS) -c $(#:.o=.c) -o $#
%.o: %.c
#echo [Compiling]: $<
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $# -c $<
It works, but looks just stupid/complicated. Can anyone help to point out what is the recommended way of doing this in Makefile? thanks!
Try using target-specific variables. A target-specific variable is declared like this:
TARGET: VAR := foo # Any valid form of assignment may be used ( =, :=, +=, ?=)
Now when the target named TARGET is being made, the variable named VAR will have the value "foo".
Using target-specific variables, you could do this, for example:
OBJ=[all other .o files here, e.g. D.o, D.o, E.o .... Z.o]
SPECIAL_OBJS=A.o B.o
all: $(OBJ) $(SPECIAL_OBJS)
$(SPECIAL_OBJS): EXTRA_FLAGS := -std=c99 # Whatever extra flags you need
%.o: %.c
#echo [Compiling]: $<
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(EXTRA_FLAGS) -o $# -c $<
The approach taken by linux kernel build system:
CFLAGS += $(CFLAGS-$#)
And then,
CFLAGS-A.o += -DEXTRA
CFLAGS-B.o += -DEXTRA
I can't answer the question for raw makefiles, but if you are willing to use automake it is trivial:
foo_CFLAGS = [options passed to CC only when building foo]