Gnu Makefile - Handling dependencies

Question

What approach do C++ programmers on Unix platform use to create and manage Makefiles?

I was using hand made Makefiles for my projects but they don\'t handle header file

Answer 1

The makedepend utility is installed on many systems and can be quite useful for generating dependency information.

Here is an example Makefile that uses the include directive (plus a little Perl magic) to incorporate the output from makedepend:

# the name of the executable that we'll build
TARGET = foo_prog
# our .cc source files
SRCS = foo.cc main.cc

# the .o versions of our source files
OBJS := $(patsubst %.cc, %.o, $(filter %.cc, $(SRCS)))
# some flags for compiling
CXXFLAGS = -Wall -Werror

# In order to build $(TARGET), we first build each of the $(OBJS).
# Then we use the given command to link those $(OBJS) into our
# $(TARGET) executable.  $^ is a shortcut for $(OBJS).  $@ is a
# shortcut for $(TARGET).
#
# The default compile rule will compile each of the $(OBJS) for us.
$(TARGET): $(OBJS)
        $(CXX) $(CXXFLAGS) $^ -o $@

# Use "make clean" to remove all of the support files.
clean:
        rm -f $(OBJS) $(TARGET) Makefile.depend *~

# This automatically uses the 'makedepend' utility to add any
# dependencies that our source files have, namely .h files.  This way,
# if the .h files change, the code will be re-compiled.
include Makefile.depend
Makefile.depend: $(SRCS)
        makedepend -f- -Y $(SRCS) 2> /dev/null | \
        perl -p -e "s/(^.*?:)/Makefile.depend \1/" > Makefile.depend

If both foo.cc and main.cc depend on foo.h, then the contents of Makefile.depend would be:

Makefile.depend foo.o: foo.h
Makefile.depend main.o: foo.h

The end result is that the dependency information from makedepend is injected into the Makefile as a series of rules. It's similar to the approach of using a .d file for each .cc file, but keeps the dependency information in one file instead of scattered all over the place.