3 ms·

Now do a project with multiple files.

by pitaj 2y ago

Calavar 2y ago
That still doesn't require any flags. Where it starts to get complicated is when you link in system libraries, because they vary between OSes and different versions/distros of the same OS. If you need to support multiple platforms this quickly becomes combinatorially complex, which is where Makefile hell comes from.
spc476 2y ago
Sure. Here's viola, a web browser from the early 90s, with a replacement makefile (GNU make) that's a bit more sane: CC = gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic CFLAGS = -g LDFLAGS = -g LDLIBS = -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lICE -lSM -lXpm -lX11 -lXext -lXmu -lXt -lm VIOLA_PATH := $(shell pwd)/resources override CFLAGS += -DPOSIX_C_SOURCE=199309L \ -D_POSIX_SOURCE -D_XOPEN_SOURCE \ -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_SVID_SOURCE \ -DDEFAULT_VIOLA_PATH='"$(VIOLA_PATH)"'\ -DVIOLA %.a: $(AR) $(ARFLAGS) $@ $? viola/viola: $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard viola/*.c)) \ libIMG/libIMG.a \ libXPA/src/libxpa.a \ libStyle/libStyle.a \ libWWW/libWWW.a \ parmcheck.o libIMG/libIMG.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libIMG/*.c)) libXPA/src/libxpa.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libXPA/src/*.c)) libStyle/libStyle.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libStyle/*.c)) libWWW/libWWW.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libWWW/*.c)) It's 155,000 lines of C code across 361 files. Not shown are the nearly 900 lines that make up the dependencies, but using `makedepend` (which came with my system) makes short work of that. I have a more complicated project that compiles an application written in Lua into a Linux executable. It wasn't hard to write, given that you can always add new rules to `make`, such as converting a `.lua` file to a `.o` file: %.o : %.lua $(BIN2C) $(B2CFLAGS) -o $*.l.c $< $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $@ $*.l.c $(RM) $*.l.c Okay, that requires a custom tool (`bin2c`) but can other build systems do this? I honestly don't know.

Now do a project with multiple files.

by pitaj 2y ago

Now do a project with multiple files.

That still doesn't require any flags. Where it starts to get complicated is when you link in system libraries, because they vary between OSes and different versions/distros of the same OS. If you need to support multiple platforms this quickly becomes combinatorially complex, which is where Makefile hell comes from.

spc476 2y ago

Sure. Here's viola, a web browser from the early 90s, with a replacement makefile (GNU make) that's a bit more sane: CC = gcc -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic CFLAGS = -g LDFLAGS = -g LDLIBS = -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lICE -lSM -lXpm -lX11 -lXext -lXmu -lXt -lm VIOLA_PATH := $(shell pwd)/resources override CFLAGS += -DPOSIX_C_SOURCE=199309L \ -D_POSIX_SOURCE -D_XOPEN_SOURCE \ -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_SVID_SOURCE \ -DDEFAULT_VIOLA_PATH='"$(VIOLA_PATH)"'\ -DVIOLA %.a: $(AR) $(ARFLAGS) $@ $? viola/viola: $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard viola/*.c)) \ libIMG/libIMG.a \ libXPA/src/libxpa.a \ libStyle/libStyle.a \ libWWW/libWWW.a \ parmcheck.o libIMG/libIMG.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libIMG/*.c)) libXPA/src/libxpa.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libXPA/src/*.c)) libStyle/libStyle.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libStyle/*.c)) libWWW/libWWW.a : $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(wildcard libWWW/*.c)) It's 155,000 lines of C code across 361 files. Not shown are the nearly 900 lines that make up the dependencies, but using `makedepend` (which came with my system) makes short work of that. I have a more complicated project that compiles an application written in Lua into a Linux executable. It wasn't hard to write, given that you can always add new rules to `make`, such as converting a `.lua` file to a `.o` file: %.o : %.lua $(BIN2C) $(B2CFLAGS) -o $*.l.c $< $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $@ $*.l.c $(RM) $*.l.c Okay, that requires a custom tool (`bin2c`) but can other build systems do this? I honestly don't know.