Overview#

This tutorial offers a practical guide on using Makefiles for task automation. It covers creating efficient task dependencies, generating dependency graphs, and writing self-documented Makefiles, including both simple and advanced examples. The tutorial aims to make task management more efficient and understandable, especially for complex projects with multiple steps.

Tutorial Information#

Tutorial Version	1.0
Creator	Marcin Prączko

Introduction#

In general, a Makefile is a file that contains a set of rules used to build software. It is used to automate the process of building software, however, it can also be used for other purposes as outlined below:

Running different tasks (not only building software)
Creating a clear dependency of tasks to help understand how tasks should be run in order
Self-documented Makefile to help understand what tasks are available
One-liners in Makefile

Runinng Makefile#

During work with Makefile, it is important to know what tasks are available. This is important as many projecs run default task when make is run without any arguments. And this can be dangerous if default task is not what you expect.

Important

In all examples in this tutorials one can run make without any arguments (safe to run)
In some examples running make without any arguments will display help
This is designed in this tutorial - however please be careful when running make without any arguments in others projects

Display help#

make
...
# Help will be displayed here

In all cases running make will automatically run default task.
In this tutorial, default task for many Makefiles is to display help.