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

In Mozilla's build system, we use GCC's -MD switch to generate the dependency files: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/configure.in#7134 and then we use a script called mddepend.pl to check for removed header files, such that removing a header simply causes a rebuild, not an error: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/config/rules.mk#2066 http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/build/unix/mddepend.pl

That script generates an .all.pp file containing all the dependencies, with extra foo.o: FORCE dependencies stuck in for missing header files. We then simply -include the .all.pp file in rules.mk right below there.