How do I make a simple makefile for gcc on Linux?

Question

I have three files: program.c, program.h and headers.h.

program.c includes program.h and headers.h.

I need to compile this on Linux using gcc compiler. I'm not sure how to do this. Netbeans created one for me, but it's empty.

Answer 1

Depending on the number of headers and your development habits, you may want to investigate gccmakedep. This program examines your current directory and adds to the end of the makefile the header dependencies for each .c/cpp file. This is overkill when you have 2 headers and one program file. However, if you have 5+ little test programs and you are editing one of 10 headers, you can then trust make to rebuild exactly those programs which were changed by your modifications.

Answer 2

For example this simple Makefile should be sufficient:

CC=gcc 
CFLAGS=-Wall

all: program
program: program.o
program.o: program.c program.h headers.h

clean:
    rm -f program program.o
run: program
    ./program

Note there must be <tab> on the next line after clean and run, not spaces.

UPDATE Comments below applied

Answer 3

The simplest make file can be

all : test

test : test.o
        gcc -o test test.o 

test.o : test.c
        gcc -c test.c

clean :
        rm test *.o

Answer 4

all: program
program.o: program.h headers.h

is enough. the rest is implicit

Answer 5

Interesting, I didn't know make would default to using the C compiler given rules regarding source files.

Anyway, a simple solution that demonstrates simple Makefile concepts would be:

HEADERS = program.h headers.h

default: program

program.o: program.c $(HEADERS)
    gcc -c program.c -o program.o

program: program.o
    gcc program.o -o program

clean:
    -rm -f program.o
    -rm -f program

(bear in mind that make requires tab instead of space indentation, so be sure to fix that when copying)

However, to support more C files, you'd have to make new rules for each of them. Thus, to improve:

HEADERS = program.h headers.h
OBJECTS = program.o

default: program

%.o: %.c $(HEADERS)
    gcc -c $< -o $@

program: $(OBJECTS)
    gcc $(OBJECTS) -o $@

clean:
    -rm -f $(OBJECTS)
    -rm -f program

I tried to make this as simple as possible by omitting variables like $(CC) and $(CFLAGS) that are usually seen in makefiles. If you're interested in figuring that out, I hope I've given you a good start on that.

Here's the Makefile I like to use for C source. Feel free to use it:

TARGET = prog
LIBS = -lm
CC = gcc
CFLAGS = -g -Wall

.PHONY: default all clean

default: $(TARGET)
all: default

OBJECTS = $(patsubst %.c, %.o, $(wildcard *.c))
HEADERS = $(wildcard *.h)

%.o: %.c $(HEADERS)
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

.PRECIOUS: $(TARGET) $(OBJECTS)

$(TARGET): $(OBJECTS)
    $(CC) $(OBJECTS) -Wall $(LIBS) -o $@

clean:
    -rm -f *.o
    -rm -f $(TARGET)

It uses the wildcard and patsubst features of the make utility to automatically include .c and .h files in the current directory, meaning when you add new code files to your directory, you won't have to update the Makefile. However, if you want to change the name of the generated executable, libraries, or compiler flags, you can just modify the variables.

In either case, don't use autoconf, please. I'm begging you! :)

Answer 6

gcc program.c -o program

no makefile necessary.