What you do is use another feature of make namely automatic variables, which are computed afresh for each rule that is executed, based on the target and prerequisites of the rule. o’ file: how do you write the ‘ cc’ command so that it operates on the right source file name? You cannot write the name in the recipe, because the name is different each time the implicit rule is applied. Suppose you are writing a pattern rule to compile a ‘. The rules are the commands needed to make the target.Ī simple makefile might be structured like this: The dependencies are source code or other things needed to make the target. The target is normally either an executable or object file name. StructureĪ makefile consists of three sections: target, dependencies, and rules. If you call it something else you will have to use make -f to call it. You can, however, give the file any name. You can then just invoke make and it will follow these instructions. Usually, the file that contains all the commands to make is called makefile or Makefile. You no longer have to write long and complex compiler commands every time. This is handled by the program make, following the commands in your makefile - it will only recompile the files which contains changes, and also makes it easier and faster to give the order to compile everything.

If you then make a change to one of the files, you will have to recompile all the files. One will often have a program which have, say, several header files and a number of C source files. The purpose of makefiles is to help you with your coding projects.

Writing makefile for c program