Run Executable from makefile

Question

Hey I just have a quick question about makefile's. Is there some way to auto run the executable generated from a makefile?

Like if I just type "make" it will compile and build and automatically execute so I can skip the extra step of ./myExecutable

I have down in my notes:

run: prog1
        ./prog1

But it doesn't seem to work.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you run make without specifying any targets, it would execute the first target it finds within the Makefile. By convention all is the name of such a target.

If you make run a pre-requisite for all and mark both all and run as PHONY targets, you should be good to go.

all: run

run: prog1
    ./prog1

.PHONY: all run

BTW, I presume you already have some rules for building prog1 in your Makefile, and hence have not included it in the above shown Makefile.

An alternative would be to just invoke make explicitly with the run target, i.e. execute the following command:

make run