I'm using makefile with gcc. Every c file has an accompanying header:
main.c main.h
test.c test.h
main.c includes main.h and test.h
test.c includes test.h
I want to avoid recompiling every c file. Makefile is ran without -B argument.
I can write the whole makefile manually and specify every dependency. When editing headers only the necessary c files get recompiled. An edit in test.h will recompile both c files and a change in main.h will only recompile main.c. As it should.
This doesn't work when I switch to the more automated approach:
OBJ = main.o test.o
%.o: %.c %.h
$(CC) -c -o $# $<
main: $(OBJ)
$(CC) -o main $(OBJ)
A change in test.h will only recompile test.c. Leaving main.c in the old with the old version of test.h header. I'm forced to run makefile with -B, if I want to use this approach.
I can specify the headers manually:
DEPS = main.h sort.h
%.o: %.c $(DEPS)
$(CC) -c -o $# $<
Then a change in main.h recompiles both main.c and test.c, the latter being unnecessary.
Updating every change in the makefile is unwieldy if I have a lot of files, and using the automated approach will increase compilation times.
Is there a better solution, one that only recompiles the needed files, or is specifying everything manually the only way?
You can specify additional dependencies of main.o using another line:
OBJ = main.o test.o
main.o: test.h
If you decide to specify manually, though, you're doing it wrong; you don't want to add the dependencies to the pattern where it takes effect for every object file. You define it separately for each object file so they're only rebuilt when the right ones change:
OBJ = main.o test.o
%.o: %.c
$(CC) -c -o $# $<
main: $(OBJ)
$(CC) -o main $(OBJ)
main.o: main.h test.h
test.o: test.h
Maintaining those last lines is what the automated dependency generation does, if you decide you want to try to use it.
Related
I have the following makefile that I use to build a program (a kernel, actually) that I'm working on. Its from scratch and I'm learning about the process, so its not perfect, but I think its powerful enough at this point for my level of experience writing makefiles.
AS = nasm
CC = gcc
LD = ld
TARGET = core
BUILD = build
SOURCES = source
INCLUDE = include
ASM = assembly
VPATH = $(SOURCES)
CFLAGS = -Wall -O -fstrength-reduce -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions \
-nostdinc -fno-builtin -I $(INCLUDE)
ASFLAGS = -f elf
#CFILES = core.c consoleio.c system.c
CFILES = $(foreach dir,$(SOURCES),$(notdir $(wildcard $(dir)/*.c)))
SFILES = assembly/start.asm
SOBJS = $(SFILES:.asm=.o)
COBJS = $(CFILES:.c=.o)
OBJS = $(SOBJS) $(COBJS)
build : $(TARGET).img
$(TARGET).img : $(TARGET).elf
c:/python26/python.exe concat.py stage1 stage2 pad.bin core.elf floppy.img
$(TARGET).elf : $(OBJS)
$(LD) -T link.ld -o $# $^
$(SOBJS) : $(SFILES)
$(AS) $(ASFLAGS) $< -o $#
%.o: %.c
#echo Compiling $<...
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $# $<
#Clean Script - Should clear out all .o files everywhere and all that.
clean:
-del *.img
-del *.o
-del assembly\*.o
-del core.elf
My main issue with this makefile is that when I modify a header file that one or more C files include, the C files aren't rebuilt. I can fix this quite easily by having all of my header files be dependencies for all of my C files, but that would effectively cause a complete rebuild of the project any time I changed/added a header file, which would not be very graceful.
What I want is for only the C files that include the header file I change to be rebuilt, and for the entire project to be linked again. I can do the linking by causing all header files to be dependencies of the target, but I cannot figure out how to make the C files be invalidated when their included header files are newer.
I've heard that GCC has some commands to make this possible (so the makefile can somehow figure out which files need to be rebuilt) but I can't for the life of me find an actual implementation example to look at. Can someone post a solution that will enable this behavior in a makefile?
EDIT: I should clarify, I'm familiar with the concept of putting the individual targets in and having each target.o require the header files. That requires me to be editing the makefile every time I include a header file somewhere, which is a bit of a pain. I'm looking for a solution that can derive the header file dependencies on its own, which I'm fairly certain I've seen in other projects.
As already pointed out elsewhere on this site, see this page:
Auto-Dependency Generation
In short, gcc can automatically create .d dependency files for you, which are mini makefile fragments containing the dependencies of the .c file you compiled.
Every time you change the .c file and compile it, the .d file will be updated.
Besides adding the -M flag to gcc, you'll need to include the .d files in the makefile (like Chris wrote above).
There are some more complicated issues in the page which are solved using sed, but you can ignore them and do a "make clean" to clear away the .d files whenever make complains about not being able to build a header file that no longer exists.
You could add a 'make depend' command as others have stated but why not get gcc to create dependencies and compile at the same time:
DEPS := $(COBJS:.o=.d)
-include $(DEPS)
%.o: %.c
$(CC) -c $(CFLAGS) -MM -MF $(patsubst %.o,%.d,$#) -o $# $<
The '-MF' parameter specifies a file to store the dependencies in.
The dash at the start of '-include' tells Make to continue when the .d file doesn't exist (e.g. on first compilation).
Note there seems to be a bug in gcc regarding the -o option. If you set the object filename to say obj/_file__c.o then the generated _file_.d will still contain _file_.o, not obj/_file_c.o.
This is equivalent to Chris Dodd's answer, but uses a different naming convention (and coincidentally doesn't require the sed magic. Copied from a later duplicate.
If you are using a GNU compiler, the compiler can assemble a list of dependencies for you. Makefile fragment:
depend: .depend
.depend: $(SOURCES)
rm -f ./.depend
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -MM $^>>./.depend;
include .depend
There is also the tool makedepend, but I never liked it as much as gcc -MM
You'll have to make individual targets for each C file, and then list the header file as a dependency. You can still use your generic targets, and just place the .h dependencies afterwards, like so:
%.o: %.c
#echo Compiling $<...
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $# $<
foo.c: bar.h
# And so on...
Basically, you need to dynamically create the makefile rules to rebuild the object files when the header files change. If you use gcc and gnumake, this is fairly easy; just put something like:
$(OBJDIR)/%.d: %.c
$(CC) -MM -MG $(CPPFLAGS) $< | sed -e 's,^\([^:]*\)\.o[ ]*:,$(#D)/\1.o $(#D)/\1.d:,' >$#
ifneq ($(MAKECMDGOALS),clean)
include $(SRCS:%.c=$(OBJDIR)/%.d)
endif
in your makefile.
Over and above what #mipadi said, you can also explore the use of the '-M' option to generate a record of the dependencies. You might even generate those into a separate file (perhaps 'depend.mk') which you then include in the makefile. Or you can find a 'make depend' rule which edits the makefile with the correct dependencies (Google terms: "do not remove this line" and depend).
Simpler solution: Just use the Makefile to have the .c to .o compilation rule be dependent on the header file(s) and whatever else is relevant in your project as a dependency.
E.g., in the Makefile somewhere:
DEPENDENCIES=mydefs.h yourdefs.h Makefile GameOfThrones.S07E01.mkv
::: (your other Makefile statements like rules
::: for constructing executables or libraries)
# Compile any .c to the corresponding .o file:
%.o: %.c $(DEPENDENCIES)
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $# $<
None of the answers worked for me. E.g. Martin Fido's answer suggests gcc can create dependency file, but when I tried that it was generating empty (zero bytes) object files for me without any warnings or errors. It might be a gcc bug. I am on
$ gcc --version gcc (GCC) 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-16)
So here's my complete Makefile that works for me; it's a combination of solutions + something that wasn't mentioned by anyone else (e.g. "suffix replacement rule" specified as .cc.o:):
CC = g++
CFLAGS = -Wall -g -std=c++0x
INCLUDES = -I./includes/
# LFLAGS = -L../lib
# LIBS = -lmylib -lm
# List of all source files
SRCS = main.cc cache.cc
# Object files defined from source files
OBJS = $(SRCS:.cc=.o)
# # define the executable file
MAIN = cache_test
#List of non-file based targets:
.PHONY: depend clean all
## .DEFAULT_GOAL := all
# List of dependencies defined from list of object files
DEPS := $(OBJS:.o=.d)
all: $(MAIN)
-include $(DEPS)
$(MAIN): $(OBJS)
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -o $(MAIN) $(OBJS) $(LFLAGS) $(LIBS)
#suffix replacement rule for building .o's from .cc's
#build dependency files first, second line actually compiles into .o
.cc.o:
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -MM -MF $(patsubst %.o,%.d,$#) $<
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -o $# $<
clean:
$(RM) *.o *~ $(MAIN) *.d
Notice I used .cc .. The above Makefile is easy to adjust for .c files.
Also notice importance of these two lines :
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -MM -MF $(patsubst %.o,%.d,$#) $<
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -o $# $<
so gcc is called once to build a dependency file first, and then actually compiles a .cc file. And so on for each source file.
I believe the mkdep command is what you want. It actually scans .c files for #include lines and creates a dependency tree for them. I believe Automake/Autoconf projects use this by default.
I have a basic makefile to compile C files necessary for compiling a shared library, I have an error because the makefile is not recognized:
SOURCES=/home/test/project/sources
OBJECTS=/home/test/project/objects
$(OBJECTS)/%.o:$(SOURCES)/%.c
$(CC) -fPIC -c $^ -o $#
sharedlib: $(OBJECTS)/%.o
$(CC) -shared -o libsharedlib.so $<
When I run make I get that there is no rule for target: $(OBJECTS)/%.o needed by sharedlib. While the rule is written right before sharedlib.
The main problem is that nowhere you are explicitly telling make what your source files are. Start by doing that:
SOURCEDIR=/home/test/project/sources
SOURCES=$(wildcard $(SOURCEDIR)/*.c)
Then, derive the object file names from the source file names by substituting .c for .o:
OBJECTDIR=/home/test/project/objects
OBJECTS=$(patsubst $(SOURCEDIR)/%.c,$(OBJECTDIR)/%.o,$(SOURCES))
You can still keep your generic rule to build object files:
$(OBJECTDIR)/%.o: $(SOURCEDIR)/%.c
$(CC) -fPIC -c $^ -o $#
But you give the explicit list of object files to the rule to make sharedlib:
libsharedlib.so: $(OBJECTS)
$(CC) -shared -o $# $<
Note that I made the name of the rule the same as the file that is being generated. That's important, because calling make twice in a row will then skip building the library a second time. You can always add an alias if you want:
sharedlib: libsharedlib.so
In that case, it's also good to tell make that sharedlib is not a real file:
.PHONY sharedlib
This prevents weird things from happening if you ever did have a file called sharedlib in the directory.
The library rule
sharedlib: $(OBJECTS)/%.o
is not enough to tell Make which objs are needed for the library.
This should work, and gives explicit control on which are the sources/objs pairs you want in the library:
SOURCESDIR=/home/test/project/sources
OBJECTDIR=/home/test/project/objects
OBJLIST = \
$(OBJECTS)/file1.o \
$(OBJECTS)/file2.o
$(OBJECTDIR)/%.o: $(SOURCESDIR)/%.c
$(CC) -fPIC -c $^ -o $#
sharedlib: $(OBJLIST)
$(CC) -shared -o libsharedlib.so $<
I'm editing an example file already in a library. Inside the directory of the example, there is a Makefile that I have been using to compile and run the example. I now want to add an additional library to this make file, I have tried copy and pasting the header and .c file into the library folder specified in the Makefile, but it is not finding it. Here is the Makefile code:
CPPFLAGS = -I../../include
CFLAGS =
LDFLAGS = -L../../lib -L../../lib64
LIBS = -lbsapi
Biometry: main.c
$(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) main.c -o Biometry $(LIBS)
The library that I wanted to add came with a .h file and a .c file. I have added those to the ../../include directory and made sure to add this to my code right below the previous #include
#include <tpl.h>
I am not sure what I am missing? The program ran properly before the addition of this library.
Libraries are usually first built and installed to your system, so you can later add them to what seems to be LIBS in your Makefile (let's say your library's called "foo", -lfoo).
So you've got two options:
The "this actually deserves the name library" path: Find or write a Makefile to turn foo.c into a libfoo.so, install that, and then use LIBS= -lbsapi -lfoo, or
The "I'm including the source code in my source code and hope that everything builds correctly" path: add foo.o to the things that Biometry needs, and add a recipe on how to build foo.o from foo.c, and add foo.c to your sources:
CPPFLAGS = -I../../include
CFLAGS =
LDFLAGS = -L../../lib -L../../lib64
LIBS = -lbsapi
Biometry: main.c foo.o
$(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) main.c foo.o -o Biometry $(LIBS)
foo.o: foo.c
$(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) foo.c -o foo.o $(LIBS)
I have the following makefile that I use to build a program (a kernel, actually) that I'm working on. Its from scratch and I'm learning about the process, so its not perfect, but I think its powerful enough at this point for my level of experience writing makefiles.
AS = nasm
CC = gcc
LD = ld
TARGET = core
BUILD = build
SOURCES = source
INCLUDE = include
ASM = assembly
VPATH = $(SOURCES)
CFLAGS = -Wall -O -fstrength-reduce -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions \
-nostdinc -fno-builtin -I $(INCLUDE)
ASFLAGS = -f elf
#CFILES = core.c consoleio.c system.c
CFILES = $(foreach dir,$(SOURCES),$(notdir $(wildcard $(dir)/*.c)))
SFILES = assembly/start.asm
SOBJS = $(SFILES:.asm=.o)
COBJS = $(CFILES:.c=.o)
OBJS = $(SOBJS) $(COBJS)
build : $(TARGET).img
$(TARGET).img : $(TARGET).elf
c:/python26/python.exe concat.py stage1 stage2 pad.bin core.elf floppy.img
$(TARGET).elf : $(OBJS)
$(LD) -T link.ld -o $# $^
$(SOBJS) : $(SFILES)
$(AS) $(ASFLAGS) $< -o $#
%.o: %.c
#echo Compiling $<...
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $# $<
#Clean Script - Should clear out all .o files everywhere and all that.
clean:
-del *.img
-del *.o
-del assembly\*.o
-del core.elf
My main issue with this makefile is that when I modify a header file that one or more C files include, the C files aren't rebuilt. I can fix this quite easily by having all of my header files be dependencies for all of my C files, but that would effectively cause a complete rebuild of the project any time I changed/added a header file, which would not be very graceful.
What I want is for only the C files that include the header file I change to be rebuilt, and for the entire project to be linked again. I can do the linking by causing all header files to be dependencies of the target, but I cannot figure out how to make the C files be invalidated when their included header files are newer.
I've heard that GCC has some commands to make this possible (so the makefile can somehow figure out which files need to be rebuilt) but I can't for the life of me find an actual implementation example to look at. Can someone post a solution that will enable this behavior in a makefile?
EDIT: I should clarify, I'm familiar with the concept of putting the individual targets in and having each target.o require the header files. That requires me to be editing the makefile every time I include a header file somewhere, which is a bit of a pain. I'm looking for a solution that can derive the header file dependencies on its own, which I'm fairly certain I've seen in other projects.
As already pointed out elsewhere on this site, see this page:
Auto-Dependency Generation
In short, gcc can automatically create .d dependency files for you, which are mini makefile fragments containing the dependencies of the .c file you compiled.
Every time you change the .c file and compile it, the .d file will be updated.
Besides adding the -M flag to gcc, you'll need to include the .d files in the makefile (like Chris wrote above).
There are some more complicated issues in the page which are solved using sed, but you can ignore them and do a "make clean" to clear away the .d files whenever make complains about not being able to build a header file that no longer exists.
You could add a 'make depend' command as others have stated but why not get gcc to create dependencies and compile at the same time:
DEPS := $(COBJS:.o=.d)
-include $(DEPS)
%.o: %.c
$(CC) -c $(CFLAGS) -MM -MF $(patsubst %.o,%.d,$#) -o $# $<
The '-MF' parameter specifies a file to store the dependencies in.
The dash at the start of '-include' tells Make to continue when the .d file doesn't exist (e.g. on first compilation).
Note there seems to be a bug in gcc regarding the -o option. If you set the object filename to say obj/_file__c.o then the generated _file_.d will still contain _file_.o, not obj/_file_c.o.
This is equivalent to Chris Dodd's answer, but uses a different naming convention (and coincidentally doesn't require the sed magic. Copied from a later duplicate.
If you are using a GNU compiler, the compiler can assemble a list of dependencies for you. Makefile fragment:
depend: .depend
.depend: $(SOURCES)
rm -f ./.depend
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -MM $^>>./.depend;
include .depend
There is also the tool makedepend, but I never liked it as much as gcc -MM
You'll have to make individual targets for each C file, and then list the header file as a dependency. You can still use your generic targets, and just place the .h dependencies afterwards, like so:
%.o: %.c
#echo Compiling $<...
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $# $<
foo.c: bar.h
# And so on...
Basically, you need to dynamically create the makefile rules to rebuild the object files when the header files change. If you use gcc and gnumake, this is fairly easy; just put something like:
$(OBJDIR)/%.d: %.c
$(CC) -MM -MG $(CPPFLAGS) $< | sed -e 's,^\([^:]*\)\.o[ ]*:,$(#D)/\1.o $(#D)/\1.d:,' >$#
ifneq ($(MAKECMDGOALS),clean)
include $(SRCS:%.c=$(OBJDIR)/%.d)
endif
in your makefile.
Over and above what #mipadi said, you can also explore the use of the '-M' option to generate a record of the dependencies. You might even generate those into a separate file (perhaps 'depend.mk') which you then include in the makefile. Or you can find a 'make depend' rule which edits the makefile with the correct dependencies (Google terms: "do not remove this line" and depend).
Simpler solution: Just use the Makefile to have the .c to .o compilation rule be dependent on the header file(s) and whatever else is relevant in your project as a dependency.
E.g., in the Makefile somewhere:
DEPENDENCIES=mydefs.h yourdefs.h Makefile GameOfThrones.S07E01.mkv
::: (your other Makefile statements like rules
::: for constructing executables or libraries)
# Compile any .c to the corresponding .o file:
%.o: %.c $(DEPENDENCIES)
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c -o $# $<
None of the answers worked for me. E.g. Martin Fido's answer suggests gcc can create dependency file, but when I tried that it was generating empty (zero bytes) object files for me without any warnings or errors. It might be a gcc bug. I am on
$ gcc --version gcc (GCC) 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-16)
So here's my complete Makefile that works for me; it's a combination of solutions + something that wasn't mentioned by anyone else (e.g. "suffix replacement rule" specified as .cc.o:):
CC = g++
CFLAGS = -Wall -g -std=c++0x
INCLUDES = -I./includes/
# LFLAGS = -L../lib
# LIBS = -lmylib -lm
# List of all source files
SRCS = main.cc cache.cc
# Object files defined from source files
OBJS = $(SRCS:.cc=.o)
# # define the executable file
MAIN = cache_test
#List of non-file based targets:
.PHONY: depend clean all
## .DEFAULT_GOAL := all
# List of dependencies defined from list of object files
DEPS := $(OBJS:.o=.d)
all: $(MAIN)
-include $(DEPS)
$(MAIN): $(OBJS)
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -o $(MAIN) $(OBJS) $(LFLAGS) $(LIBS)
#suffix replacement rule for building .o's from .cc's
#build dependency files first, second line actually compiles into .o
.cc.o:
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -MM -MF $(patsubst %.o,%.d,$#) $<
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -o $# $<
clean:
$(RM) *.o *~ $(MAIN) *.d
Notice I used .cc .. The above Makefile is easy to adjust for .c files.
Also notice importance of these two lines :
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -MM -MF $(patsubst %.o,%.d,$#) $<
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c -o $# $<
so gcc is called once to build a dependency file first, and then actually compiles a .cc file. And so on for each source file.
I believe the mkdep command is what you want. It actually scans .c files for #include lines and creates a dependency tree for them. I believe Automake/Autoconf projects use this by default.
I'm writing a little implementation of Conway's Game of Life in C. The source code is split in three files: main.c and functions.c/functions.h, where I put my functions definitions and declarations.
Now, to create a grid of cell, I have a matrix of this type:
Cell grid[GRID_HEIGHT][GRID_WIDTH];
where GRID_HEIGHT and GRID_WIDTH are constants defined in functions.h:
#define GRID_HEIGHT 10
#define GRID_WIDTH 10
The program runs fine, compiled with make and Makefile. But the problem is: if I try to change GRID_HEIGHT or GRID_WIDTH, when I run again my Makefile it says that all files are up-to-date!
I've tried to compile using the good ol' way gcc main.c etc. and it runs as it should. So, why make does not recompile the source?
This is my Makefile:
CC = gcc
OBJECTS = main.o functions.o
Game\ of\ Life : $(OBJECTS)
$(CC) $(OBJECTS) -o Game\ of\ Life -lncurses
%.o : %.c
$(CC) -c $<
Because you haven't told it that recompilation depends on functions.h.
Try adding this to your Makefile:
%.o : functions.h
Alternatively, modify your existing rule to be:
%.o : %.c functions.h
$(CC) -c $< -o $#
You've told make that .o files don't depend on .h files, so it doesn't recompile anything when a header changes.
Getting it to work right is hard (you need to generate dependencies for each .c file), but an easy way is just to define HEADERS which contains all your header files and make each .o file depend on all your headers.
If you're using GCC (well, you are), then it can be solved generically by passing -MD option to the compiler, GCC will generate a file containing Make dependencies on included headers:
CC = gcc
OBJECTS = main.o functions.o
%.o : %.c
$(CC) -MD -c $<
-include $(OBJECTS:.o=.d)
Some headers-related information can also be found in this question.