tearitco/makefile-for-c

A simple Makefile for C executables and static libraries

A simple Makefile for C

This repository contains a minimal Makefile for building executables and static libraries in C.

• Use built-in rules to compile and link
• Track dependencies to header files (using $(CC) -MMD)
• Object files outside source directory (optional)
• Build static libraries (archives)
• Source file and object file subdirectories
• Uses vpath to locate source files
• Safe for parallel make (make -jN)
• make clean
• cscope, ctags and etags (optional)
• make test
• Profile using gprof
• Coverage using gcov and lcov

Usage

In the beginning of the file, modify CC, CFLAGS, LDLIBS and LDFLAGS.

• Compiler options go to CFLAGS
• Libraries to link with go to LDLIBS
• Linker arguments (e.g. -Lpath/to/lib) go to LDFLAGS

Put file names of all targets (TARGETS) and source code files (SRCS), not including header files.

List all targets and their dependencies.

To build, run make. To build outside source directory, run make -f path/to/Makefile.

For cscope run make cscope.out. For ctags run make tags. For etag run make etags.

Testing, profiling and coverage

To enable profiling and/or coverage, set PROFILE=1 or COVERAGE=1. Run tests using make test (optional), which invokes the TEST_SUITE specified in Makefile or run your tests manually. Running tests will write out profile and coverage information to gmon.out (profile) and *.gcda for each object file (coverage). Run make profile to generate gprof.out. Run make coverage to generate coverage/index.html using lcov.

make PROFILE=1 COVERAGE=1
make test
make PROFILE=1 COVERAGE=1 coverage profile

Issues

• make clean all doesn't work. Workaround: make clean ; make all works.