I am reading a makefile for a Qt-created project that has the following:
{backend}.cpp{release\}.obj::
$(CXX) -c $(CXXFLAGS) $(INCPATH) -Forelease\ #<<
$<
<<
(above code is using \t for recipe and is as written in makefile)
Both the rule and the recipe confuse me.
I'll start with {backend} in the rule. Obviously the same confusion for {release} as well. I assume this is a reference to a particular sub-directory named backend. I guess that ..\backend\release\bar.obj would be found as a legitimate target? But what part of make says this is legitimate syntax and what exactly happens here?
FWIW: This is in a section commented as: ##### implicit rules.
Version: GNU Make 4.2.1 Built for x86_64-unknown-cygwin
Bonus points:
Explain the use of #<< and << in the recipe... (Yes, I'm lacking in bash shell finesse...). Is this referencing the first prerequisite with $< and silently redirecting it? Why isn't it $$<?
Thanks.
That is an NMAKE batch-mode rule
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/batch-mode-rules?view=vs-2017
The equivalent GNU Make rule would be something like
backend/%.obj: release/%.cpp:
With the difference that, as the name suggests, these rules will invoke their recipes only once for all valid targets and expect the rule to create all of the targets in a single pass with the $< macro.
The << syntax is NMAKE's inline file feature
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/inline-files-in-a-makefile?view=vs-2017
This expands and captures everything between the angle brackets and saves it to a file, in this case a temporary file as no filename is specified after the brackets. The file is then passed to the compiler as a response file on the first line of the recipe through the # option.
Related
I feel stupid, but I cannot find the solution myself:
I have a Makefile that correctly builds objects from C source, and I want to place $(OBJECTS) in an archive library.
I'm using GNU Make 4.0.
x.a: $(OBJECTS)
echo "$< ($(OBJECTS))"
$(AR) $(ARFLAGS) $# $<
(Lines are indented with TABs in original. The echo was added for debugging purposes only, The $(AR) $(ARFLAGS) $# $< was copied from make's internal rules)
Make outputs (at the end after the objects were built):
echo "log_thread/log_thread.o (log_thread/log_thread.o log_thread/thread.o)"
log_thread/log_thread.o (log_thread/log_thread.o log_thread/thread.o)
ar rv x.a log_thread/log_thread.o
ar: creating x.a
a - log_thread/log_thread.o
So I expect both objects modules to be added to the library x.a, but $< only contains one object module, as opposed to $(OBJECTS)).
My Make knowledge may be a little rusty, maybe that's why I don't get it.
Of course both object modules exist, and the output was created after having removed x.a (the original file is a bit more complex).
I'm not sure where the confusion lies:
The $< automatic variable contains the first prerequisite only, as per definition.
See the GNU make manual.
To get all prerequisites newer than the target, $? is the correct automatic variable.
So the correct rule probably is:
x.a: $(OBJECTS)
echo "$? ($(OBJECTS))"
$(AR) $(ARFLAGS) $# $?
For clarity, I am running this on windows with GnuWin32 make.
I have a set of directories with markdown files in at several different levels - theoretically they could be in the branch nodes, but I think currently they are only in the leaf nodes. I have a set of pandoc/LaTeX commands to run to turn the markdown files into PDFs - and obviously only want to recreate the PDFs if the markdown file has been updated, so a makefile seems appropriate.
What I would like is a single makefile in the root, which iterates over any and all sub-directories (to any depth) and applies the make rule I'll specify for running pandoc.
From what I've been able to find, recursive makefiles require you to have a makefile in each sub-directory (which seems like an administrative overhead that I would like to avoid) and/or require you to list out all the sub-directories at the start of the makefile (again, would prefer to avoid this).
Theoretical folder structure:
root
|-make
|-Folder AB
| |-File1.md
| \-File2.md
|-Folder C
| \-File3.md
\-Folder D
|-Folder E
| \-File4.md
|-Folder F
\-File5.md
How do I write a makefile to deal with this situation?
Here is a small set of Makefile rules that hopefuly would get you going
%.pdf : %.md
pandoc -o $# --pdf-engine=xelatex $^
PDF_FILES=FolderA/File1.pdf FolderA/File2.pdf \
FolderC/File3.pdf FolderD/FolderE/File4.pdf FolderD/FolderF/File5.pdf
all: ${PDF_FILES}
Let me explain what is going on here. First we have a pattern rule that tells make how to convert a Markdown file to a PDF file. The --pdf-engine=xelatex option is here just for the purpose of illustration.
Then we need to tell Make which files to consider. We put the names together in a single variable PDF_FILES. This value for this variable can be build via a separate scripts that scans all subdirectories for .md files.
Note that one has to be extra careful if filenames or directory names contain spaces.
Then we ask Make to check if any of the PDF_FILES should be updated.
If you have other targets in your makefile, make sure that all is the first non-pattern target, or call make as make all
Updating the Makefile
If shell functions works for you and basic utilities such as sed and find are available, you could make your makefile dynamic with a single line.
%.pdf : %.md
pandoc -o $# --pdf-engine=xelatex $^
PDF_FILES:=$(shell find -name "*.md" | xargs echo | sed 's/\.md/\.pdf/g' )
all: ${PDF_FILES}
MadScientist suggested just that in the comments
Otherwise you could implement a script using the tools available on your operating system and add an additional target update: that would compute the list of files and replace the line starting with PDF_FILES with an updated list of files.
Final version of the code that worked for Windows, based on #DmitiChubarov and #MadScientist's suggestions is as follows:
%.pdf: %.md
pandoc $^ -o $#
PDF_FILES:=$(shell dir /s /b *.md | sed "s/\.md/\.pdf/g")
all: ${PDF_FILES}
Can I write a wrapper makefile that will cd one level up and execute there make with all the command options I have given the wrapper?
In more detail:
Directory project contains a real Makefile with some different targets.
Directory project/resources contains the wrapper Makefile which should call Makefile in project.
When I am in my shell in directory project/resources, I execute
make TARGET
and the Makefile there just cds one directory up and calls
make TARGET
in the directory project.
Is this possible? And how?
You could use a very simple Makefile for all your sub-directories:
%:
$(MAKE) -C .. $#
% is a last resort match-anything pattern rule that will match any target... for which there is no implicit rule (GNU make has an incredibly large number of implicit rules). So, if none of your targets are covered by an implicit rule, this should work. Else you will have to tell make not to use the implicit rules it knows. This can be done (with GNU make) by calling make with the -r option:
cd project/resources
make -r <anything>
will call make in project for target <anything>. The main drawback is that the -r flag is passed to the sub-make and so the implicit rules will not apply neither in project, which can be a problem. If it is you can obtain the same effect by adding an empty .SUFFIXES target to theMakefile in project/resources:
.SUFFIXES:
%:
$(MAKE) -C .. $#
With my version of GNU make (3.82) it works like a charm and the sub-make has all the default implicit rules.
Yes, you can have a makefile which works for "any" target.
The GNU make manual discusses this in the Overriding Part of Another Makefile section:
Sometimes it is useful to have a makefile that is mostly just like another makefile. You can often use the ‘include’ directive to include one in the other, and add more targets or variable definitions. However, it is invalid for two makefiles to give different recipes for the same target. But there is another way.
In the containing makefile (the one that wants to include the other), you can use a match-anything pattern rule to say that to remake any target that cannot be made from the information in the containing makefile, make should look in another makefile. See Pattern Rules, for more information on pattern rules.
For example, if you have a makefile called Makefile that says how to make the target ‘foo’ (and other targets), you can write a makefile called GNUmakefile that contains:
foo:
frobnicate > foo
%: force
#$(MAKE) -f Makefile $#
force: ;
If you say ‘make foo’, make will find GNUmakefile, read it, and see that to make foo, it needs to run the recipe ‘frobnicate > foo’. If you say ‘make bar’, make will find no way to make bar in GNUmakefile, so it will use the recipe from the pattern rule: ‘make -f Makefile bar’. If Makefile provides a rule for updating bar, make will apply the rule. And likewise for any other target that GNUmakefile does not say how to make.
The way this works is that the pattern rule has a pattern of just ‘%’, so it matches any target whatever. The rule specifies a prerequisite force, to guarantee that the recipe will be run even if the target file already exists. We give the force target an empty recipe to prevent make from searching for an implicit rule to build it—otherwise it would apply the same match-anything rule to force itself and create a prerequisite loop!
One option: use a wrapper file to execute the commands to do that. Just be sure your target make files don't include the child directory that has the wrapper, or else you can create an endless loop. For example,
clean:
pushd .. && make clean && popd
Using the comment of user Renaud Pacalet and the answer to a different question the following one-liner is as close as I could get. The whole Makefile reads:
IGNORE := $(shell $(MAKE) -C .. $(MAKECMDGOALS))
This solutions comes with a few caveats:
Command line option -B does not get passed through to the subsequent make call.
The output of the subsequently called make process (in the project directory) is not printed to stdout.
The wrapper make process reports for any given target at the end :
make: *** No rule to make target TARGET. Stop.
I am thinking I may need to use the file function in GNU make, and just can not follow the example they give. I have looked online, but don't see any post with more explanation. Here is the example they give:
program: $(OBJECTS)
$(file >$#.in,$^)
$(CMD) $(CMDFLAGS) #$#.in
#rm $#.in
I think I know what it is doing at a high level as it is explained in the manual.
$#.in
is a list of all the target files
$^
is a list of the source files
I am not sure how #$#.in is used on the third line or what there is an # sign at the beginning. What does that mean please? What does it supposed to do?
The key to the operation of that recipe is given in the prose immediately preceding it in the manual:
Many commands use the convention that an argument prefixed with an # specifies a file containing more arguments. Then you might write your recipe in this way:
program: $(OBJECTS)
$(file >$#.in,$^)
$(CMD) $(CMDFLAGS) #$#.in
#rm $#.in
$# is the target file (there is only one of those in any given recipe)
$#.in is the target file with .in added to the end of the name.
$^ is the "list" of the all the prerequisites of the target.
#$#.in is the name of the target with .in at the end and # at the start.
So the $(file ...) call in that recipe writes the list of prerequisites of the target into a file called program.in in "overwrite" mode and then passes that file name to the $(CMD) command using the #filename convention that was mentioned.
I use this tool called Lazy C++ which breaks a single C++ .lzz file into a .h and .cpp file. I want Makepp to expect both of these files to exist after my rule for building .lzz files, but I'm not sure how to put two targets into a single build line.
I've never used Makepp personally, but since it's a drop-in replacement for GNU Make, you should be able to do something like:
build: foo.h foo.cpp
g++ $(CFLAGS) foo.cpp -o $(LFLAGS) foo
foo.h foo.cpp: foo.lzz
lzz foo.lzz
Also not sure about the lzz invocation there, but that should help. You can read more about this at http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/gnu/make/make_37.html.
Lzz is amazing! This is just what I was looking for http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++/browse_thread/thread/c50de73b70a6a957/f3f47fcdcfb6bc09
Actually all you need is to depend (typically) on foo.o in your link rule, and a pattern rule to call lzz:
%.cpp %.h: %.lzz
lzz $(input)
The rest will fall into place automatically. When compiling any source that includes foo.h, or linking foo.o to a library or program, lzz will first get called automatically.
Makepp will also recognize if only the timestamp but not the content of the produced file changed, and ignore that. But it can't hurt to give it less to do, by using the lzz options to suppress recreating an identical file.
Regards -- Daniel