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doxygen-stamp also depend on '$(top_srcdir)/include/*.h' (or .hpp or whatever) it will rebuild when doxygen-stamp is out of date relative to any .h file in the include directory.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
Related
I'm working with autotools for the first time, for a tool that's written in perl (SQLTeX), so only installation is required, no compilation.
The toplevel contains a simple Makefile.am:
AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign
SUBDIRS = src man doc
EXTRA_DIST = README.md
.PHONY: all-am
all-am:
#echo "Done!"
If I create Makefile.am files in the sub-directories too, nothing seems to happen there so I just stick to Makefile. A snippet from src/Makefile (EDIT: this file is now renamed to Makefile.am):
SQLTeX: SQLTeX.pl
cat $^ | sed -e 's#{PERLDIR}#$(PL)#;s#{SYSCONFDIR}#$(sysconfdir)#' > $#
#chmod +x $#
The symbol PL is set as expect (defined in the same makefile), but sysconfdir is empty, although it is defined in the top-level Makefile generated by ./configure.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance!
What am I doing wrong?
Although the Autotools support, with some caveats, recursing into directories where you provide pre-built makefiles, you cannot expect those pre-built makefiles to be able to rely on autotools-provided variables such as the standard directory variables bindir and sysconfdir. Thus, although it is allowed to rely on hand-written makefiles in subdirectories, this is probably a false trail for you.
I recommend going back to this:
If I create Makefile.am files in the sub-directories too, nothing seems to happen there
and working out what's wrong. The Autotools definitely support generating recursive build systems, and one Makefile.am per directory is part of the usual approach to that. If it didn't work for you then my first guess would be that you forgot to list the extra makefiles in your AC_CONFIG_FILES list.
As an alternative, just because you have multiple directories does not mean that you need to use recursive make. It is quite possible to build such a project with the support of a single makefile, and the Autotools can help with such a makefile.
I am trying to understand a makefile from a project I am working on. It's using automake/autotools and contains this simple rule:
DEPS_SRC = $(shell cd $(srcdir); find . -name '*.ez')
DEPS = $(basename $(DEPS_SRC))
all : $(DEPS)
$(DEPS) : % : %.ez
$(UNZIP) -o $<
Say the directory structure is:
my-app/deps/
build/
When executing make my-app in the build folder the rule will basically unpack *.ez files located in the my-app/deps/ folder into build/my-app/deps/ folder.
I don't know if that's enough information to solve the problem that I am going to explain as I don't know enough about automake/autotools. Please ask if any additional information is needed.
The problem is that I noticed that having the unpacked directory in the source folder prevents make from unpacking the archive in the target folder. For example, given the following structure in the source folder:
my-app/deps/archive1.ez
my-app/deps/archive2.ez
my-app/deps/archive2/
make will only unpack archive1.ez in the build folder:
build/my-app/deps/archive1/
I would like to know if this is a bug in my makefile or a feature of automake. If the later, is there any workaround or setting or variable available to disable it?
This is primarily a GNU make question, not particularly specific to the Autotools. However, since the target system's make is of GNU's flavor (else none of this works), we can assume that the Makefile generated by configure uses GNU make's VPATH feature as part of its support for out-of-source (a.k.a. VPATH) builds such as the one you are performing.
The value of the VPATH variable that configure will have inserted into the Makefile is used as a search path for prerequisites that are not found relative to the build directory. The key point, however, is that it is also used as a search path for rule targets. That makes a certain amount of sense, especially for targets that are prerequisites of other rules.
In your case, however, that leads directly to the behavior you describe:
the default target depends on ./my-app/deps/archive2
resolving that name against the build directory does not produce a valid file name
before attempting to build that target, make looks in the directories listed in the VPATH, which, in your example case, will contain .. or an equivalent
make finds .././my-app/deps/archive2 in this VPATH search, and therefore determines that the specified target already exists, and does not need to be built
Thus, the behavior you observe is normal for GNU make, supposing the Makefile is constructed by Autoconf from an Automake-generated template.
is there any workaround or setting or variable available to disable it?
Do you really need one? If the archive file has already been unpacked in the source tree, then you can expect make to find its contents, too, via the VPATH. At least if the Makefile is well-prepared overall for for out-of-source builds.
But if you want to be certain to get the archive files unpacked in the build directory then you can specify that explicitly. This ought to do it:
DEPS_SRC = $(shell cd $(srcdir); find . -name '*.ez')
DEPS = $(basename $(DEPS_SRC))
LOCAL_DEPS = $(addprefix $(abs_builddir)/,$(DEPS))
all : $(LOCAL_DEPS)
$(LOCAL_DEPS) : $(abs_builddir)/% : %.ez
$(UNZIP) -o $<
That prefixes the name of each dependency with the absolute path to the build directory, and updates the rule for unzipping the archives to accommodate it. Targets with absolute paths such as that cannot be located in the VPATH.
GNU Make 3.8.1
I am working on what is basically a plugin for a software product. The plugin is built in a subdirectory of the main product, so the directory structure looks something like:
product
product/src
product/plugin
product/plugin/myPlugin
where "myPlugin" is the name of the plugin I'm working on. What I would like to do, is be able to build myPlugin as well as another version of myPlugin, call it myPlugin-lite. This plugin would have the same sources as myPlugin, but use different flags and defines in the makefiles. The idea was to create a duplicate of the myPlugin tree structure, containing only myPlugin's makefiles, and have it build using the sources from myPlugin. So the directory structure would look like:
product
product/src
product/plugin
product/plugin/myPlugin
product/plugin/myPlugin-lite
myPlugin would build and create all its targets within its subdirectory, and myPlugin-lite would build and create all its targets within its subdirectory. I found a few solutions here: http://make.mad-scientist.net/papers/multi-architecture-builds/ and out of these options it seems like the symbolic links would be best, but it still doesn't feel like the "right" way to do this.
My question is, is this the best/simplest/most maintainable way to do this? If not what are the alternatives?
If the only thing you need from myPlugin is source files then this is exactly what VPATH and The vpath Directive are for.
4.5.1 VPATH: Search Path for All Prerequisites
The value of the make variable VPATH specifies a list of directories that make should search. Most often, the directories are expected to contain prerequisite files that are not in the current directory; however, make uses VPATH as a search list for both prerequisites and targets of rules.
Thus, if a file that is listed as a target or prerequisite does not exist in the current directory, make searches the directories listed in VPATH for a file with that name. If a file is found in one of them, that file may become the prerequisite (see below). Rules may then specify the names of files in the prerequisite list as if they all existed in the current directory. See Writing Recipes with Directory Search.
In the VPATH variable, directory names are separated by colons or blanks. The order in which directories are listed is the order followed by make in its search. (On MS-DOS and MS-Windows, semi-colons are used as separators of directory names in VPATH, since the colon can be used in the pathname itself, after the drive letter.)
For example,
VPATH = src:../headers
specifies a path containing two directories, src and ../headers, which make searches in that order.
With this value of VPATH, the following rule,
foo.o : foo.c
is interpreted as if it were written like this:
foo.o : src/foo.c
assuming the file foo.c does not exist in the current directory but is found in the directory src.
Also see How Not to Use VPATH from MadScientist for more discussion about what they aren't for. Though that's largely just a build-up for the multi-architecture-builds paper you already read.
My Makefile.am includes a file (with various defined variables), for example:
include make.config
...
The problem is that this file is in turn generated by a tool (i.e. config.generator.sh) based on some input file (i.e. input.dat). The straightforward and wrong idea would be to add a rule to generate make.config:
make.config : input.dat
config.generator.sh input.dat > make.config
include make.config
...
Although this content is perfectly working makefile on its own without automake, the idea is doomed with automake. The make.config file is included by automake before I even have a chance to execute make (and it fails as the file is not yet generated):
automake: cannot open < make.config: No such file or directory
Is there a way to postpone effect of include directive until make is run (possibly by using another directive)?
There is probably a way to simply run arbitrary commands before any makefile generation is done (i.e. AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS*). But the question is more complicated because the config.generator.sh is supposed to use executables which are in turn also generated during the same build process (so there is a dependency chain which logically has to be managed by makefiles from the same project). The documentation simply confirms the logic without providing alternatives.
The solution is described in this email of Automake's mailing list.
The idea is to use include directives inside small regular "wrapper" makefile and include Automake-generated Makefile into it (note the upper case M). Because makefile is not an Automake template, the include works as expected triggering builds for non-existing files.
Note that:
By default make utility will search for makefile first (not for Makefile) making this approach working seamlessly.
It is still recommended to specify all rules inside Makefile.am and keep the "wrapper" makefile simple. The rules for non-existing files will naturally come from the generated Makefile anyway.
I've come across the same annoying problem today when moving my OCaml project to Autotools. My solution is to use autoconf's substitution to go around automake. For the above example, I'd add a substitution to configure.ac:
AC_SUBST([include_make_config], ["include make.config"])
and adjust Makefile.am, replacing the include directive with the autoconf variable reference:
make.config : input.dat
config.generator.sh input.dat > make.config
#include_make_config#
...
automake doesn't touch the #include_make_config# line so it gets carried over into the generated Makefile.in. When autoconf takes over, it substitutes the variable with include make.config in the final Makefile.
Note: I use this with OCaml's ocamldep dependency generator.
I'm trying to convert an makefile-build to cmake (to avoid the current state of being forced to take care for the windows-build env based on make/msdev and the linux based on make/gcc).
In this project, I've found a directory full of sourcecode files that get, based on a naming convention, compiled to libraries. (e.g. c1223.c => c1223.dll (or .sl) )
The current makefile consists of some directives using wildcards, e.g.:
LIB_NO = $(basename $(subst s,,$#))
OBJ = $(OBJ_PATH)/s$(LIB_NO).o $(OBJ_PATH)/c$(LIB_NO).o\
$(OBJ_PATH)/b$(LIB_NO).o
$(OBJ_PATH)/%.o : %.c
-$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -I$(PWD) -c $< -o $#
-(chmod a+w $#;true)
I've searched for a while but can't find anything that seems to work. Is it even possible with cmake to let it generate a wildcard based build?
Any comments, hints and suggestions are very welcome :)
cheers
Markus
You can use fairly primitive globbing (there's no regular expression syntax that I can see).
file(GLOB TESTSRCS "test/src/*.cpp")
# Compile the test sources.
add_executable(Tests ${TESTSRCS})
target_link_libraries(Tests ${LIB} gtest gtest_main)
The actual makefiles do not seem to contain wildcard searches inside them. If you add new files you will need to re-run cmake.
What I don't know is how you would manage to wrap up the library creation in a single macro if you have many different library files to generate.
You might be able to do something like this if there's only one c file per library:
file(GLOB libfiles "path/to/libs/c*.c")
foreach(libfile ${libfiles})
GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(libname ${libfile} NAME) # remove the '.c' part (untested, hopefully this will work)
add_library(${libname} ${libfile})
endforeach(libfile)
If anybody else has a better solution, I would also like to learn it.
CMake does not generate makefiles that have wildcard-based rules in them. It generates specific rules for the files that it knows about.
In your example, you are explicitly listing the .o files that comprise your library. In CMake, you would instead explicitly list the source files that contribute to your library, and then let CMake take care of the rest.
Do you need makefiles that have wildcard-based rules in them for some reason?
Couldn't you simply construct a list of the source files, and then, for each element in the list, do an "add_library" call with the source file and a library name constructed from the source file name?