LESS: make to create less files itself - makefile

Goog evening,
I'm completely new to makefiles and worked out a file which fits our needs good but I'm not completely satisfied. We use bootstrap3 and have around 40 customers with differend color settings. That's why we need to compile 40 slightly different css files. Until now, we have the following file structure
less/customer1.less
css/customer1.css
color/customer.less contains bootstraps variables file
customer1.less contains
#variables: 'myCompany/color/customer1'; //this is forwarded to where bootrstrap loads the variables template
#import "bootstrap";
#import 'myCompany/modifications';
Our makefile
SOURCES = $(shell ls less/*.less)
# Files we don't want to be build
SOURCES := $(filter-out less/bootstrap.less, $(SOURCES))
SOURCES := $(filter-out less/a11y.less, $(SOURCES))
TARGETS = $(patsubst less/%.less,css/%.css,$(SOURCES))
DEPEND = $(patsubst less/%.less,make/%.d,$(SOURCES))
css/%.css: less/%.less
# First building dependency files
lessc -M $< $# > 'make/$*.d'
# Then building CSS and sourcemap
lessc -s $< > $# --source-map=map/$*.css.map --source-map-basepath=map --clean-css
-include $(DEPEND)
all: $(TARGETS)
Call
$ make all
Creates Makefiles in make/, CSS in css/ CSS source-maps in map/ and expects LESS being in less/.
This works but we need to create customerX.less for each customer manually even if the only difference is the assigned color scheme/variables file.
Make should look in the color folder if there is a file for this customerX and then create (but not overwrite!) customerX.less in less directory.
Any make guru out here know how to do this with make?

I believe you can do what you want here with an order-only prerequisite.
Something like:
less/customer%.less: | color/customer.less
[ -f '$#' ] || cp $^ $#
I don't think the -f test is strictly necessary there but it shouldn't hurt and is safer.
On a different topic $(shell ls less/*.less) can probably be done better with either $(shell echo less/*.less) (you don't care about what ls does you just want the shell glob expansion) or $(wildcard less/*.less). (Technically shelling out and wildcard are slightly different but I don't know that that will matter for you here.)
Also note that the all target will not create these missing less files for you (as SOURCES will not contain them as the file didn't exist) but make css/customer#.css will create them if necessary.

Related

Why does make recompile all files?

My goal is the following: I have a directory src which contains markdown files (.md). I want to run a command on each of these files so that the comments are removed and the edited files are stored in a separate directory. For this I want to use make.
This is the Makefile I have:
.PHONY: clean all
BUILD_DIR := build
SRC_DIRS := src
SRCS := $(shell find $(SRC_DIRS) -name *.md)
DSTS := $(patsubst $(SRC_DIRS)/%.md,$(BUILD_DIR)/%.md,$(SRCS))
all: $(DSTS)
# The aim of this is to remove all my comments from the final documents
$(DSTS): $(SRCS)
pandoc --strip-comments -f markdown -i $< -t markdown -o $#
clean:
rm $(BUILD_DIR)/*.md
While this works in general, I noticed that the command is executed on all files, even though I changed only one single file.
Example: I have 3 Files src/a.md, src/b.md and src/c.md. Now I run make and all files are correctly generated in the build folder. Now I only edit c.md and run make again. I would expect that make only "compiles" src/c.md anew but instead all three files are compiled again. What am I doing wrong?
Your line
$(DSTS): $(SRCS)
is saying ‘All of the DSTS depend on all of the SRCS’, so whenever any one of the $(SRCS) is newer than any of the $(DSTS), this pandoc action will be run.
That's not what you want to express. What you want is something more like
$(BUILD_DIR)/%.md: $(SRC_DIRS)/%.md
pandoc --strip-comments -f markdown -i $< -t markdown -o $#
all: $(DSTS)
That says that all of the $(DSTS) should be up to date, and the pattern rule teaches Make what each one depends on, and how to build it, if it is out of date.
(As a general point, looking your original rule, it's rarely the right thing to do to have multiple targets in a rule, as you have with $(DSTS); also note that in your original, $< always refers only to the first of the dependencies in $(SRCS))

How can I build HTML with a Makefile with backlinks?

I am trying to statically build HTML files that requires a markdown file and a meta file called "whatlinkshere" for the HTML file to demonstrate its back links.
I believe it can be effeciently done by a Makefile, by first generating all the "whatlinkshere" files. I don't think this can be done in parallel, because the program that generates these files needs to append to the whatlinkshere files, and there could be race conditions that I am not quite sure how to solve.
Once the "whatlinkshere" files are generated then if a markdown file is edited, say foo.mdwn to point to bar.mdwn, only foo.mdwn needs to be analysed again for "whatlinkshere" changes. And finally only foo.html and bar.html need to be rebuilt.
I am struggling to accomplish this in my backlinks project.
INFILES = $(shell find . -name "*.mdwn")
OUTFILES = $(INFILES:.mdwn=.html)
LINKFILES = $(INFILES:.mdwn=.whatlinkshere)
all: $(OUTFILES)
# These need to be all made before the HTML is processed
$(LINKFILES): $(INFILES)
#echo Creating backlinks $#
#touch $#
#go run backlinks.go $<
%.html: %.mdwn %.whatlinkshere
#echo Deps $^
#cmark $^ > $#
Current problems here is that *.whatlinkshere** aren't being generated on first run. My workaround is for i in *.mdwn; do go run backlinks.go $i; done. Furthermore there are not rebuilding as I want after editing a file as described earlier. Something is horribly wrong. What am I missing?
I think I finally understood your problem. If I understood well:
You have a bunch of *.mdwn source files.
You generate *.whatlinkshere files from your *.mdwn source files using the backlinks.go utility. But this utility does not produce foo.whatlinkshere from foo.mdwn. It analyzes foo.mdwn, searches for links to other pages in it and, for each link to bar it finds, it appends a [foo](foo.html) reference to bar.whatlinkshere.
From each foo.mdwn source file you want to build a corresponding foo.html file with:
$ cmark foo.mdwn foo.whatlinkshere
Your rule:
$(LINKFILES): $(INFILES)
#echo Creating backlinks $#
#touch $#
#go run backlinks.go $<
contains one error and has several drawbacks. The error is the use of the $< automatic variable in the recipe. It expands as the first prerequisite, that is probably always pageA.mdwn in your case. Not what you want. $^ expands as all prerequisites but it is not the correct solution because:
your go utility takes only one source file name, but even if it was accepting several...
...make will run the recipe several times, one per link file, which is a waste, and...
...as your go utility appends to the link files it will even be worse than a waste: back links will be counted several times each, and...
...if make runs in parallel mode (note that you can prevent this with make -j1 or by adding the .NOTPARALLEL: special rule to your Makefile, but it is a pity) there is a risk of race conditions.
Important: the following works only with a flat organization where all source files and HTML files are in the same directory as the Makefile. Other organizations are possible, of course, but they would require some modifications.
First option using multi-targets pattern rules
One possibility is to use a special property of make pattern rules: when they have several targets make considers that one single execution of the recipe produces all targets. For instance:
pageA.w%e pageB.w%e pageC.w%e: pageA.mdwn pageB.mdwn pageC.mdwn
for m in $^; do go run backlinks.go $$m; done
tells make that pageA.whatlinkshere, pageB.whatlinkshere and pageC.whatlinkshere are all generated by one execution of:
for m in pageA.mdwn pageB.mdwn pageC.mdwn; do go run backlinks.go $m; done
(make expands $^ as all prerequisites and $$m as $m). Of course, we want to automate the computation of the pageA.w%e pageB.w%e pageC.w%e pattern targets list. This should make it:
INFILES := $(shell find . -name "*.mdwn")
OUTFILES := $(INFILES:.mdwn=.html)
LINKFILES := $(INFILES:.mdwn=.whatlinkshere)
LINKPATTERN := $(INFILES:.mdwn=.w%e)
.PHONY: all clean
.PRECIOUS: $(LINKFILES)
all: $(OUTFILES)
# These need to be all made before the HTML is processed
$(LINKPATTERN): $(INFILES)
#echo Creating backlinks
#rm -f $(LINKFILES)
#touch $(LINKFILES)
#for m in $^; do go run backlinks.go $$m; done
%.html: %.mdwn %.whatlinkshere
#echo Deps $^
#cmark $^ > $#
clean:
rm -f $(LINKFILES) $(OUTFILES)
Notes:
I declared all and clean as phony because... it is what they are.
I declared the whatlinkshere files as precious because (some of them) are considered by make as intermediates and without this declaration make would delete them after building the HTML files.
In the recipe for the whatlinkshere files I added rm -f $(LINKFILES) such that, if the recipe is executed, we restart from a clean state instead of concatenating new stuff to old (possibly outdated) references.
The pattern stem in the $(LINKPATTERN) can be anything but must match at least one character. I used w%e but whatlin%shere would work too. Use whatever is specific enough in your case. If you have a pageB.where file prefer whatlin%shere or what%here.
There is a drawback with this solution but it is due to your particular set-up: each time one single mdwn file changes it must be re-analyzed (which is normal) but any whatlinkshere file can be impacted. This is not predictable, it depends on the links that have been modified in this source file. But more problematic is the fact that the result of this analysis is appended to the impacted whatlinkshere files. They are not "edited" with the old content relative to this source file replaced by the new one. So, if you change just a comment in a source file, all its links will be appended again to the respective whatlinkshere files (while they are already there). This is probably not what you want.
This is why the solution above deletes all whatlinkshere files and re-analyzes all source files each time one single source file changes. And another negative consequence is that all HTML files must also be re-generated because all whatlinkshere files changed (even if their content did not really change, but make does not know this). If the analysis is super fast and you have a small number of mdwn files, it should be OK. Else it is sub-optimal but not easy to solve because of your particular set-up.
Second option using recursive make, separated back link files and marker files
There is a possibility, however, which consists in:
separating all back links references with one whatlinkshere file per from/to pair: foo.backlinks/bar.whatlinkshere contains all references to bar found in foo.mdwn,
using recursive make with one first invocation (when the STEP make variable is unset) to update all whatlinkshere files that need to be and a second invocation (STEP set to 2) to generate the HTML files that need to be,
using empty dummy files to mark that a foo.mdwn file has been analyzed: foo.backlinks/.done,
using the secondary expansion to be able to refer to the stem of a pattern rule in its list of prerequisites (and using $$ to escape the fist expansion).
But it is probably a bit more difficult to understand (and maintain).
INFILES := $(shell find . -name "*.mdwn")
OUTFILES := $(INFILES:.mdwn=.html)
DONEFILES := $(patsubst %.mdwn,%.backlinks/.done,$(INFILES))
.PHONY: all clean
ifeq ($(STEP),)
all $(OUTFILES): $(DONEFILES)
$(MAKE) STEP=2 $#
%.backlinks/.done: %.mdwn
rm -rf $(dir $#)
mkdir -p $(dir $#)
cp $< $(dir $#)
cd $(dir $#); go run ../backlinks.go $<; rm $<
touch $#
else
all: $(OUTFILES)
.SECONDEXPANSION:
%.html: %.mdwn $$(wildcard *.backlinks/$$*.whatlinkshere)
#echo Deps $^
#cmark $^ > $#
endif
clean:
rm -rf *.backlinks $(OUTFILES)
Even if it looks more complicated there are a few advantages with this version:
only outdated targets are rebuilt and only once each,
all whatlinkshere files are updated (if needed) before any HTML file is updated (if needed),
the whatlinkshere files can be built in parallel,
the HTML files can be built in parallel.
Third option using only recursive make and marker files
If you do not care about inaccurate results where back links persist in the results after they disappeared from the source files or where back links are uselessly replicated, we can reuse ideas from the previous solution but drop the separation in individual from/to whatlinkshere files.
INFILES := $(wildcard *.mdwn)
OUTFILES := $(patsubst %.mdwn,%.html,$(INFILES))
LINKFILES := $(patsubst %.mdwn,%.whatlinkshere,$(INFILES))
DONEFILES := $(patsubst %.mdwn,.%.done,$(INFILES))
.PHONY: all clean
.PRECIOUS: $(LINKFILES)
ifeq ($(STEP),)
.NOTPARALLEL:
all $(OUTFILES): $(DONEFILES)
$(MAKE) STEP=2 $#
.%.done: %.mdwn
go run backlinks.go $<
touch $#
else
all: $(OUTFILES)
%.html: %.mdwn %.whatlinkshere
#echo Deps $^
#cmark $^ > $#
%.whatlinkshere:
touch $#
endif
clean:
rm -f $(OUTFILES) $(LINKFILES) $(DONEFILES)
Notes:
As this works only for a flat organization I replaced the $(shell find...) by the make built-in $(wildcard ...).
I used patsubst instead of the old syntax but it's just a matter of taste.
The %.whatlinkshere: rule is a default rule to create the missing empty whatlinkshere files.
The NOTPARALLEL: special target prevents parallel execution when building the whatlinkshere files.

Makefile multiple targets in sub-directories

Hi!
I started messing with makefiles a few days ago, so I gave myself a exercise to learn as well as making my life easier.
I basically want to read the directory the makefile is in (root) and use luamin to compress the file as much as possible before I deploy it to our server. But I would like to have it as flexible as possible, so depending on where said file is in the directory it should mirror it to the server.
So if it finds a file in a sub folder called home it should create a new folder with the same name with the compressed file within. I have gotten the compression of files in the root folder working as well as creation of the directories where the files should reside.
objs = $(wildcard *.lua)
dirs = $(wildcard */)
compress: $(objs)
mkdir -p .build
luamin -f $(objs) > .build/$(objs)
mkdir .build/$(dirs)
clean:
rm -rf ./.build
deploy: .build
cp ./.build/* ~
If you use GNU make, there are several features that really help to do what you want. Warning: this works if and only if your file names do not contain spaces:
srcfiles := $(shell find . -path .build -prune -o -type f -name '*.lua' -print)
dstfiles := $(addprefix .build/,$(srcfiles))
.PHONY: compress clean deploy
compress: $(dstfiles)
$(dstfiles): .build/%: %
mkdir -p $(dir $#)
luamin -f $< > $#
clean:
rm -rf ./.build
deploy: .build
cp ./.build/* ~
Explanation:
The shell make function is used to run the find command that searches all subdirectories, except .build, for *.lua files. The result is assigned to the srcfiles make variable.
The addprefix make function is used to add the .build/ prefix to all words of the srcfiles make variable and assign the result to the dstfiles make variable.
The compress target is the first (real) target in the Makefile. It is thus the default goal that gets run when invoking just make. It is the same as invoking make compress. The compress target is declared as phony. This tells make that it is not a real file, just like clean and deploy. The compress target depends on all destination files. If one is missing or older than its corresponding source file, it must be rebuilt.
The make static pattern rule $(dstfiles): .build/%: %... declares a generic rule where each destination file (.build/./foo/bar/baz.lua) depends on the corresponding source file (./foo/bar/baz.lua). The recipe creates the destination directory (./foo/bar/), computed thanks to the dir make function. Then, it applies the luamin command. The recipe makes use of the $# and $< automatic variables.

makefile: performing include to a .mak file after certain action on it

I have a large project I'm working on, in which I want to perform include to some .mak file, but only after I make change to this file content via a command inside the original makefile. Since it's a large project it will be hard to write code, so I will give this ridiculous example instead:
I have some small C project that all it's C and header files are in the same directory, and I need to write a makefile. I'm not allowed to use clean rule in the makefile I write, but I have a file named file.mak that I can include in my makefile. Content of file.mak:
.PHONY: clean
cleam:
$(RM) $(objs) test
The problem here is that the rule is cleam and not clean. I'm also not allowed to change manually file.mak , but I'm allowed to do this with a command inside the original makefile. This can be done easily by:
sed -i 's/cleam/clean/g' file.mak
So I thought of writing the makefile like this:
CC = gcc
srcs = $(wildcard ./*.c)
objs = $(srcs:.c=.o)
test: $(objs) change_file include_file
$(CC) $^ -o $#
%.o: %.c
$(CC) -c $< -o $#
change_file:
$(shell sed -i 's/cleam/clean/g' file.mak)
include_file: change_file
include file.mak
But I get the following error:
include: Command not found
So I understand that there is a problem of using include inside a rule, so is there a way to achieve what I want?
(GNU) make has a feature Remaking Makefiles that can be used for scenarios like this, but your approach is wrong. include is a directive and can't be used in a recipe.
Instead, when you include a file, make first checks for rules creating this exact file and executes them. As in your case, the file you want to include already exists, you have to make this rule .PHONY to force its execution. It would look like this:
.PHONY: file.mak
file.mak:
sed -i 's/cleam/clean/g' file.mak
include file.mak
As a more robust alternative (without the need for a phony rule), consider creating a fixed version (copy) and include this:
file_fixed.mak: file.mak
sed -e 's/cleam/clean/g' <file.mak >file_fixed.mak
include file_fixed.mak

rename target files in GNU Makefile

the makefile below processes files matching the patterncontent/%.md and outputs the targets in the html directory. Source files are named with the convention of putting a leading number in front of them, like content/01.index.md or content/O2.second-page.md and so on. I would like to remove the leading 0x. number sequence in the target file. For instance, content/01.index.html would generate html/index.html.
How can I do this?
Thanks
MD_FILES = $(shell find content/ -type f -name '*.md')
HTML_FILES = $(patsubst content/%.md, html/%.html, $(MD_FILES))
all: $(HTML_FILES) html/static
html/%.html : content/%.md
mkdir -p $(#D)
python generator/generate.py $< $#
.PHONY: html/static
html/static :
rsync -rupE generator/static html/
.PHONY: clean
clean:
rm -fr html
Replace:
html/%.html : content/%.md
mkdir -p $(#D)
python generator/generate.py $< $#
with:
html/%.html : content/%.md
mkdir -p $(#D)
file='$(#F)'; python generator/generate.py $< "$(#D)/${file#*.}"
Unfortunately, I can't think of a good way of doing that in make itself. I can think of one way but it isn't as simple as that escaping and it isn't safe for files with spaces (not that that matters much here since make already can't handle those).
IMHO, it is a bad idea to use find or wildcards to list files in makefiles. This is because developers have temporary or debugging files sometimes. It is best to list files explicitly. This way, it forces the developer to think about their intent.
If you agree to list files explicitly, then in this case it is best to list the target files, rather than source files, and here is your answer:
HTML_FILES := html/index.html html/second-page.html
.SECONDEXPANSION:
$(HTML_FILES): html/%.html : $$(wildcard content/*.$$*.md)
(put recipe here, using $# and $<)

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