CSC282 2015S, Class 10: Improved Make

Overview

• Preliminaries.
• A quick review of Make.
• Variables in Make.
• Some standard variables for C programs.
• Another example: Document development.
• Automatic variables.
• Generic rules.
• Standard make rules.
• Other useful techniques.
• Miscellaneous tools and techniques.

Preliminaries

Admin

• Remember that there's an excellent free book on Make (listed in the course front door). You learn make, like most tools, by using it in your own work.
• Homework one of two:
  • Version a: Create a full make suite for some useful C project, including options for cleaning, packaging, and more. (This version assumes that you look up the standard targets.)
  • Version b: Find a particularly creative makefile and explain some interesting parts.

Questions

A quick review of Make

Goals

• Make it easier to compile and update projects.
  • When you update something like a header file, it knows that it has to recompile, and recompiles only what is necessary.
• Document the steps needed for compilinga
  • We've documented in a computer-usable format
  • A human who knows the syntax could also follow them

Format

• Create a file called Makefile

• Need to specify target, action, dependencies

  target: dependencies
  \t      action1
  \t      action2
  ...
  

• We can include variables in our makefile (see next section)

• Targets can either be particular files or virtual targets

Learned from writing your own

• Broader issue: How to deal with a project that has a lot of .c and .h files.
• It makes you more efficient.
• It's relatively easy to do.
• If you have just one target, you can just type make. If you have multiple targets, typing make only makes the first one.
  • Standard practice: First target is called default and lists all the things you really want to make.

Variables in Make

• Variables are a powerful tool.
  • A variable is a name for one or more things, which may be computed.
  • Use pi rather than 3.141592653589... (mnemonic rather than a value)
  • Saves repeated calculations: Use 'x' rather than ten lines of code that we use multiple times.
  • Allows you to make global changes. E.g., if we write code that has to run in Indiana, we can redefine pi to 3.
  • Sometimes the same value has multiple meanings, and variables clarify the meaning.
• Certain variables in make make your code more obscure but easier to write.

• In make, initialize with

  VARIABLE = values or computations
  

• Custom is that variables are all caps

• In make, we generally use variables with $(VARIABLE)

Some standard variables for C programs

Make has a lot of standard rules (e.g., for building .o files from .c files). We can customize using variables.

• CC

Another example: Document development

Sam's web sites

• Simple things: Don't write in HTML
  • Write in Markdown (.md)
  • Write in Docbook/SGML - HTML + variables!
• Rules for converting
  • SGML/Docbook -> html
  • md -> html Multiple steps
  • html -> postscript
  • postscript -> pdf

Automatic variables

Generic rules

Standard make rules

Other useful techniques

Miscellaneous tools and techniques