CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++cmakefilebuilddependencies
Laeeq Khan
Laeeq Khan

Reputation: 167

How to use makedepend in a non-standard makefile name

I am trying to use makedepend in a makefile named Makefile_abc. Normally when I have to build a target trg, I say

make -f Makefile_abc trg

and this works beautifully. I have added following lines in this makefile.

dep:
    makedepend  main.c

Now, when I do,

make -f Makefile_abc  dep

I get the error,

makedepend: error:  [mM]akefile is not present
make: *** [depend] Error 1

If I rename my makefile as Makefile, then following command works fine,

make depend

So, I am looking for a way to use makedepend on non-standard makefile names.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1529

Answers (1)

Jonathan Leffler
Jonathan Leffler

Reputation: 753970

This is a basic 'read the manual' question.

Looking at makedepend(1), you need -fMakefile_abc in the recipe for the target dep (optionally with a space between -f and Makefile_abc):

dep:
        makedepend -fMakefile_abc main.c

To update the dependencies, you'd run:

$ make -f Makefile_abc dep

This would cause make to run:

makedepend -fMakefile_abc main.c

(Note that the 'standard' — most common — name for the target is depend rather than dep, so you'd normally run make -fMakefile_abc depend or, with a plain makefile file, make depend.)

If you're using GNU Make, you might also add another line to Makefile_abc:

.PHONY: dep     # Or depend, depending…

This tells make that there won't be a file dep created by the rule.

You can often get information about how to run a command by using makedepend --help or makedepend -: — the first may (or may not) give a useful help message outlining options, and the second is very unlikely to be a valid option which should generate a 'usage' message that summarizes the options.

Upvotes: 1

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