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make
The make
utility automatically determines which pieces of a large
program need to be recompiled, and issues commands to recompile them.
This manual describes GNU make
, which was implemented by Richard
Stallman and Roland McGrath. Development since Version 3.76 has been
handled by Paul Smith.
GNU make
conforms to section 6.2 of IEEE Standard
1003.2-1992 (POSIX.2).
Our examples show C programs, since they are most common, but you can use
make
with any programming language whose compiler can be run with a
shell command. Indeed, make
is not limited to programs. You can
use it to describe any task where some files must be updated automatically
from others whenever the others change.
Preparing and Running Make 1.1 How to Read This Manual On Reading this Text 1.2 Problems and Bugs
To prepare to use make
, you must write a file called
the makefile that describes the relationships among files
in your program and provides commands for updating each file.
In a program, typically, the executable file is updated from object
files, which are in turn made by compiling source files.
Once a suitable makefile exists, each time you change some source files, this simple shell command:
make |
suffices to perform all necessary recompilations. The make
program
uses the makefile data base and the last-modification times of the files to
decide which of the files need to be updated. For each of those files, it
issues the commands recorded in the data base.
You can provide command line arguments to make
to control which
files should be recompiled, or how. See section How to Run make
.
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If you are new to make
, or are looking for a general
introduction, read the first few sections of each chapter, skipping the
later sections. In each chapter, the first few sections contain
introductory or general information and the later sections contain
specialized or technical information.
The exception is the second chapter, An Introduction to Makefiles, all of which is introductory.
If you are familiar with other make
programs, see Features of GNU make
, which lists the enhancements GNU
make
has, and Incompatibilities and Missing Features, which explains the few things GNU make
lacks that
others have.
For a quick summary, see 9.7 Summary of Options, A. Quick Reference, and 4.9 Special Built-in Target Names.
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If you have problems with GNU make
or think you've found a bug,
please report it to the developers; we cannot promise to do anything but
we might well want to fix it.
Before reporting a bug, make sure you've actually found a real bug. Carefully reread the documentation and see if it really says you can do what you're trying to do. If it's not clear whether you should be able to do something or not, report that too; it's a bug in the documentation!
Before reporting a bug or trying to fix it yourself, try to isolate it
to the smallest possible makefile that reproduces the problem. Then
send us the makefile and the exact results make
gave you,
including any error or warning messages. Please don't paraphrase
these messages: it's best to cut and paste them into your report.
When generating this small makefile, be sure to not use any non-free
or unusual tools in your commands: you can almost always emulate what
such a tool would do with simple shell commands. Finally, be sure to
explain what you expected to occur; this will help us decide whether
the problem was really in the documentation.
Once you have a precise problem you can report it in one of two ways. Either send electronic mail to:
[email protected] |
or use our Web-based project management tool, at:
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/make/ |
In addition to the information above, please be careful to include the
version number of make
you are using. You can get this
information with the command `make --version'. Be sure also to
include the type of machine and operating system you are using. One
way to obtain this information is by looking at the final lines of
output from the command `make --help'.
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