How can I build include path through my dependencies? - makefile

I have a variable, DEPS, which is a list of libs, e.g. libs/a libs/b. I have my makefile set up so that everything will build in the correct order, however I also want to set a variable INCLUDE_PATH that will add all the libs' include directories.
Right now that looks like:
INCLUDE_PATH = $(foreach DEP,$(DEPS),-I$(ROOT)/$(DEP)/include )
Which works.
But say I have a library, libs/c that depends on the other two, and my app depends on it. I could always write DEPS = libs/c libs/a libs/b in my makefile to get the INCLUDE_PATH correct but is there a way to write this so that just DEPS = libs/c suffices and the INCLUDE_PATH will still be -I../libs/c/include -I../libs/a/include -I../libs/b/include?

Related

Include a third makefile with a path relative to second, when second isn't in directory of first

I have a Makefile with only project-level definitions: which source files to use, what binary or library to make, etc..
It includes ../../Make.Arch for architecture-specific definitions (such as compiler command).
In turn, Make.Arch is meant to include ../etc/Makefile.Standard for all the boilerplate of actually allowing the make system to work .
But include requires a path relative to where the makefile is actually being run (or maybe where the first Makefile is), not relative to the second... What to do?
Make interprets relative paths from the working directory, the directory in which Make is being run. You haven't specified how you're running Make, so I'll assume your running it in the directory with Makefile.
If you are allowed to modify the makefiles, you can change the paths.
You could change Make.Arch from this:
include ../etc/Makefile.Standard
to this:
include ../../../etc/Makefile.Standard
but that would require that any makefile that uses Make.Arch be two directories down from it. That's clearly not a good idea. But we can use a variable:
include $(ARCH_DIR)/../etc/Makefile.Standard
which is provided by Makefile (or any other makefile that uses Make.Arch):
ARCH_DIR := ../..
include $(ARCH_DIR)/Make.Arch
If you are not allowed to modify the makefiles, then you must cheat. One way is to create a symbolic link to Makefile.Standard.
mkdir ../etc
ln -s ../../../etc/Makefile.Standard ../etc
Now Makefile will work. (It ought to be possible to make a link to etc/, but for some reason I can't get that to work right now.)

gnu make put include path into make file

My include file references many other make files using something like:
include Enablers/MSRP/Android.mk
the problem is that the make file that references all other makefiles is deep in sub-folders, or, in other words the correct path would be something like:
include ../../../../../Enablers/MSRP/Android.mk
In order for me to build my makefile I have to add ../../../../.. to make search path:
ndk-build -I../../../../.. -j8 other params...
(ndk-build is a wrapper for gnu make on android buildsystem, it's equivalent to make build-local.mk other params)
So, what can i do to to avoid adding the ../../../../.. to make search path? I could go the makefile and update all makefile include statements, but I'm looking for the way to add that extra include path at the top of my makefile. Something like:
makeincludepaht += include Enablers/MSRP/Android.mk
include Enablers/MSRP/Android.mk
...
Append the new include path to the standard search path:
.INCLUDE_DIRS += ../../..
Look at the end of the Special Variables section for the .INCLUDE_DIRS special variable.
I'm not familiar with ndk-build, but I have similar setup. I just set a variable in make that contains this path and then use that variable in all my includes.
makefile:
INCLUDE_TOP=../../../../..
include $(INCLUDE_TOP)/someDir/includes.mk
You can also then use INCLUDE_TOP inside includes.mk for all your paths. It is usually better to make it default to some value by conditionally setting in there.
includes.mk:
# will only set if not already set
INCLUDE_TOP ?= ./
HEADERS=$(INCLUDE_TOP)/headers

Evaluate automake variable only once

We are using automake & autoconf to build our multi-package software. I was wondering how to fill a variable with the output of e.g. shell-scripts once and reuse this, e.g. for needed include dirs
INCLUDES := -I`some-ext-config --incdir`
Using := instead of = here makes this variable filled once so some-ext-config will only be called once (AFAIK this comes from plain make). Of course INCLUDES is the depreciated cousin of AM_CPPFLAGS, but would I have used that one instead, the shell script would have been called for each compile.
Using INCLUDES instead of AM_CPPFLAGS is an acceptable solution for me (though I imagine there might be portability issues), but I have no solution for e.g. LDFLAGS for a libtool library
libmylib_la_LDFLAGS := `some-ext-config --ldflags` # will always be evaluated
What is the general solution inside automake if I want to make sure these external tools are not called multiple times? I would like to stay away from using an obvious AC_SUBST in configure.ac since we have to make sure our packages can be build both from subdirectories (some configure.ac in there) and with an recursive make from the top-level and a configure.ac there which shouldn't need to know too much about the different subprojects.
:= is GNU-make specific, so you are advised to use just = in automake. If you do not want to run the shell script everytime INCLUDES (or AM_CPPFLAGS, does not matter, it would occur with either), then run the script in configure.ac and use variable substitution via AC_SUBST. That is essentially what pkg-config would do — and come to speak of it, you could just use that instead of some-ext-config if there is a .pc file.
# configure.ac
libfoo_CPPFLAGS=$(some-ext-config --incdir);
libfoo_LIBS=$(some-ext-config --libs);
AC_SUBST([libfoo_CPPFLAGS])
AC_SUBST([libfoo_LIBS])
# Makefile.am
AM_CPPFLAGS = -Iwhatever ${libfoo_CPPFLAGS}
bin_PROGRAMS = foo
foo_LDADD = ${libfoo_LIBS}
This is a more lengthy explanation of what I suggested in a comment to jørgensen's answer.
I understand your top-level configure.ac must generate the makefiles of multiple sub-projects, and performs the required tests so that you don't have to run the configure in any subproject (a sub-configure serves only when you want to work on this particular sub-project).
In that case, you want to avoid duplicating as much stuff as possible from various configure.ac. I suggest you factor all the code of the sub-configure that must also be performed by the top-level configure in an m4 macro. This includes tests, AC_SUBSTS, and Makefile declarations.
For instance using only one-subproject. Here is a top-level ./configure.ac:
AC_INIT([toplevel], [1.0])
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign -Werror])
SUB1_COMMON([sub1/]) dnl Stuff from the subproject
AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile])
AC_OUTPUT
With ./Makefile.am:
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I sub1/m4
SUBDIRS = sub1
Now here is sub1/configure.ac for the sub-project:
AC_INIT([sub1], [1.0])
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign -Werror])
AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR([m4])
SUB1_COMMON
AC_OUTPUT
With SUB1_COMMON defined in m4/common.m4:
AC_DEFUN([SUB1_COMMON],
[AC_SUBST([PYTHON3LIB], [`pkg-config --libs python3`])
AC_CONFIG_FILES([$1Makefile])])
And finally sub1/Makefile.am is just:
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4
# Build something.
...
The SUB1_COMMON contains all the code you want to share between the two configure.ac files, and use argument $1 to relocate the config files appropriately. In this example, the variable PYTHON3LIB will be defined regardless of which configure were run.

(Auto)make dependency across multiple makefiles

I am wondering if this is possible at all. Here is the situation:
My project uses automake to build its targets. The top-directory contains the usual configure.ac and Makefile.am. Amongst others, the Makefile.am contains a SUBDIRS variable listing the subdirectories, important for my question is the doc and include directory. The include directory's makefile looks like:
nobase_include_HEADERS = <lot-of-headers>
so it basically installs the headers. The makefile in doc is supposed to generate html documentation out of those files:
doxygen-stamp: Doxyfile
$(DOXYGEN) $<
echo "timestamp for Doxyfile" > $#
all-local: doxygen-stamp
Everything works fine so far, but if I change any of the headers in include the documentation is still up-to-date - because I did not list them as dependencies. What I would like to have is to have a doxygen-stamp-target that is rebuilt once the headers change without again listing all headers as dependencies. Is that possible and if it is, how?
In this case, using a single Makefile would be hinted at — though you can split it up by using the automake include instruction (also see section 7.3 "An alternative approach to subdirectories" of the am manual). Therefore:
#can't use nobase_
include_HEADERS = include/foo.h include/bar.h
doc/doxygen-stamp: ${include_HEADERS}
I think if you make doxygen-stamp also depend on '$(top_srcdir)/include/*.h' (or .hpp or whatever) it will rebuild when doxygen-stamp is out of date relative to any .h file in the include directory.
doxygen-stamp: Doxyfile $(top_srcdir)/include/*.h

With autoconf/automake, how do I specify include file paths?

Let's say I want to have the generate makefile pass some specific header paths to g++.
What do I need to add to configure.ac or Makefile.am to specify this?
(note - I do not want to pass it in the CPPFLAGS with ./configure. I want those paths baked in before that step)
EDIT:
Specifically, I want to to include let's say /usr/include/freetype and /mypath/include.
I put AC_CHECK_HEADERS([freetype/config/ftheader.h]) and it passes, but doesn't seem to add it to the -I passed to g++.
I also did try adding CPPFLAGS=-I.:/usr/include/freetype:/mypath/include, but it screws up and puts -I twice, the first as -I. and it ignores the 2nd -I.
Since the question was about what to put in an automakefile, I would have thought AM_CPPFLAGS was the right variable to use to add includes and defines for all C/C++ compiles. See http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Program-Variables.html
Example:
AM_CPPFLAGS = -I/usr/local/custom/include/path
Hard coding paths into the package files is absolutely the wrong thing to do. If you choose to do that, then you need to be aware that you are violating the basic rules of building a package with the autotools. If you specify /mypath/include in your package files, you are specifying things specific to your machine in a package that is intended to work on all machines; clearly that is wrong. It looks like what you want is for your package (when built on your machine) to look for header files in /mypath. That is easy to accomplish without bastardizing your package. There are (at least) 3 ways to do it:
Use a config.site file. In /usr/local/share/config.site (create this file if necessary), add the line:
CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS -I/mypath/include"
Now any package using an autoconf generated configure script with the default prefix (/usr/local) will append -I/mypath/include to CPPFLAGS and the headers in /mypath/include will be found.
If you want the assignment to be made for all builds (not just those to be installed in /usr/local), you can use this:
Put the same line specifying CPPFLAGS in $HOME/config.site, and set CONFIG_SITE=$HOME/config.site in the environment of your default shell. Now, whenever you run an autoconf generated configure script, the assignments from $HOME/config.site will be made.
Simply specify CPPFLAGS in the environment of your default shell.
All of these solutions have two primary advantages over modifying your build files. First, they will work for all autoconf generated packages (as long as they follow the rules and don't do things like assigning user variables such as CPPFLAGS in the build files). Second, they do not put your machine specific information into a package that ought to work on all machines.

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