CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++makefile
Barry
Barry

Reputation: 303880

Right way to do non-recursive make?

There seem to be only a handful of resources on creating a non-recursive make system, and in none of the ones I've found can I figure out how to handle my use case. My hierarchy looks like this:

project/
project/libA/...
project/libB/...
...
project/appA/...
project/appB/...

So maybe project/appA/makefile depends on libA and libB and project/appB/makefile depends on libA, libC, and libF or something. I want to be able to make in every directory and have that work. I have a recursive solution for this already.

All the resources always define a root project/makefile that includes all the directories above it. But I need that backwards. Are there any examples in the wild for this? I think ideally I want a given library makefile to look like:

include ../../rules.mk

SRC := $(wildcard src/*.cpp)
INCDIR := ./include

$(add_build_target)

... where the base rules.mk would define add_build_target to append the correct rules for the given SRC and INCDIR to build. Is this the correct approach? And how do I actually write add_build_target to add the correct targets (.o's for all the .cxx's) - everything I've tried gives me "no rule to make target whatever.o" issues, despite me thinking that I've defined them....

Upvotes: 3

Views: 882

Answers (2)

Mark Galeck
Mark Galeck

Reputation: 6405

I have implemented and extended ideas from the paper

http://sites.e-advies.nl/nonrecursive-make.html

on multiple occasions in corporate environments, and they work very well, in small or large scale environments. Basically, there is implemented a "directory stack" there and recursive inclusion. Like I said, works well for me. Read this paper, I recommend it.

Upvotes: 2

igagis
igagis

Reputation: 2079

Have a look at my non-recursive build system implementation called prorab: https://github.com/cppfw/prorab

It allows to achieve exactly what you want. So, you will have independent makefile in each directory appA, appB, libA, libB,... and if you cd to that directory you'll be able to build the project by just typing make. In that makefile you'll be able to include a makefile from another directory and add a dependency for your app binary on library binary. So, that way if you do some changes to the library code and build the app, it will detect that and rebuild the library. Then it is also possible to have a top-level makefile which includes all makefiles from those sub-directories, for building everything. Let me know if you need help with using prorab.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions