I think "magic" is much too loaded a way to characterize it. The rule applicable to C pertains to building foo.o from foo.c. It amounts to two lines in a Make

I think "magic" is much too loaded a way to characterize it. The rule applicable to C pertains to building foo.o from foo.c. It amounts to two lines in a Makefile: %.o: %.c $(COMPILE.c) $(OUTPUT_OPTION) $< where COMPILE.c and the other variable is predefined to trivial values. There are other rules useful for C++, and for yacc, etc., but they are just as simple. You can cancel all the implicit rules with "-r", or cancel selected implicit rules by naming them in the Makefile like this: %.o : %.c ; All this is in the make manual, which is quite good: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Catalogue-of-Rules.html https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Catalogue...