Title:

Introduction to ``make'' for Handling Software Projects

Abstract:

As software projects grow, the task of re-compiling and linking the code together to produce an executable program becomes increasingly more difficult or lengthy. Investing a little time in understanding ``make'' and creating your own ``Makefile'' pays enormous dividends reducing the debugging cycle and self-documenting the tasks necessary to produce an executable. ``make'' is a simple and useful tool that compares the dependencies in the ``Makefile'', with respect to the source file time stamps, executing the given commands to create an up-to-date dependent. This discussion starts with very simple ``Makefiles'' to more involved and fiendishly clever ones, examining each aspect of ``make''.