makefile extension

Question

I\'m writing a C program using gcc in cygwin. My question is, how do you create a makefile? I mean, what file-extension does it have? I know how to write simple rules, but I can

Answer 1

Open your favorite text editor, and create a file named Makefile.

Content might vary, but, provided you have a program called hello.c a very, very simple Makefile to compile it could be:

hello: hello.c
     gcc -Wall hello.c -o hello.exe

After that you run run from cygwin shell:

$ ls
hello.c Makefile
$ make
....

And your Makefile will try to compile hello.c. If everything goes as expected, you can run the hello.exe program by executing the following shell command:

$ ./hello.exe

Here's a nice tutorial on Makefiles.

Answer 2

They are usually named Makefile, or makefile. No extension. That's just convention, though.

It's not trivial to write a makefile, look up a guide or tutorial =)