Re: Cant seem to figure how to make header file dependencies

[Ankur G35 Saxena]

On 6/23/06, Leeuwesteijn,Joost <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Ankur,

>    I have always been afraid of makefiles

Makefiles are cool :-) The alternative is to type all the compile/link
commands and flags at the command line every time, that's your choice :-)

> I am trying to make a generic makefile, in an effort to
> understand the makefile itself.
> I have written a makefile to make libraries.
> [...]
> INC_CFLAGS= -I/usr/include/mysql++ -I$(TOPDIR)/cncpbaseclass
> -I/usr/include/mysql -I$(TOPDIR)/oammsg
> -I$(TOPDIR)/neoamcomm -I../util_lib -I$(TOPDIR)/util

Makefile looks OK. You could use += to put all the flags on a separate line
to make it more readable. And use := where possible for immediate variable
expansion (see manual).

> #OBJS= $(SRCS:%.cpp=%.o)
> all: $(OUT_LIB_DIR)/$(OUT_LIB)
> $(OUT_LIB_DIR)/$(OUT_LIB): $(SRCS)
>         $(COMPILE) $(CFLAGS) -c $?
>         $(MKLIB) $(OUT_LIB_DIR)/$(OUT_LIB) $(OBJS)
>         $(RM) $(OBJS)

Not sure if I would have done it like this; I guess I would still have added
a rule for the .o files. But the $? makes sure only the modified .o's are
rebuilt so this works.

> This seems to work just fine for source file changes. But I
> cant seem to figure out how to add header file dependencies
> to it?
> How can I achieve this?

You really need to add a rule that says which .o files depend on which .h
files. Make will then only compile the .c's that have a modified .h file.
You can still remove all the .o files after the lib is created, but that
wouldn't make much sense because everything will have to be rebuilt at the
next make invocation; the whole purpose of make is to save time and only
rebuild things that need to be rebuilt; reusing already created files.

I would suggest to take a look at Paul's website:
http://make.paulandlesley.org/autodep.html
It might look tricky at first and might require some modification depending
on your build environment. I use the (advanced) mechanism as described on
the webpage and it works fine.

Good luck.

--
Joost Leeuwesteijn


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Thank you.

Thanks Joost, but what if a header file changes and I would like all
the code to be redone? Considering I am already breaking down the code
into small sub components which have few files per sub component and
are seperated in different directories, so if a header file in that
directory changes then I want all the .cpp files in that directory to
be made. 

How do I achieve this? The chances of a header file change are very
small and hence all the code would only be compiled less than 10% of
the times. I didnt want to add the .o's because i have been able to
achieve compiling of only changed cpp's with this makefile as the
library archive(.a) depends on the cpp's, so if a cpp changes it
compiles only the changed file and adds to the library and removes the
.o. So this is working just fine, but i still cant get to make all the
cpp files when any of the header files change? Any suggestions?

And thanks for your suggestion on how to make it more readable, I will make the changes you mentioned.

Ankur