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<style> .reveal strong { font-weight: bold; color: orange; } .reveal p { text-align: left; } .reveal section h1 { color: orange; } .reveal section h2 { color: orange; } .reveal code { font-family: 'Ubuntu Mono'; color: orange; } </style>

Introduction to Make

Learning Goals of This Unit

  • Explain the basic functionality of makefiles (timestamps, dependencies, update rules).
  • Read simple makefiles and know where to look for additional material for complex makefiles.
  • Write simple makefiles for small projects.

Demo Part 1

Introduce Hello-World example

What is Make?

  • A build system
  • The / a go-to solution for small (research) projects (e.g., latex document, processing data, ...), though also used in big projects (Linux kernel)
  • A building block for CMake
  • Nice non-expert introduction in py-RSE book, chapter 9
  • GNU Make: standard implementation of Make for Linux and macOS

How Does it Work?

  • When you create / change a file, the OS updates timestamp of file.
  • Make compares timestamps to see which files are older / newer than others.
  • In Makefile:
    • Rules which file(s) depend on which other file(s)
    • Rules how to update out-of-date files
  • When you run make, Make updates out-of-date files including transitive dependencies in correct order.

Demo Part 2

  • Single rule makefile
  • Multiple rules
  • Phony targets

Advanced Make

  • There is more:
    • Variables
    • Rules
    • Wildcards
  • ... but becomes quickly very hard to read.
  • Not covered because CMake does this for us.
  • But nicely documented in py-RSE chapter 9.

Summary

  • Make is an important build system by itself and an important building block for CMake.
  • Make works by checking timestamps and updating outdated files if necessary.
  • Each file can be a target. A target has dependencies and an update rule.
  • make target updates "target", just make updates first target.
  • Phony targets are empty (helper) targets, not files.
  • Always define the standard phony targets all and clean.

Further Reading