Customer Reviews

GNU Make: A Program for Directed Compilation

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'll add to the positive remarks of other reviewers that this book will help you understand why features that work with one version of make do not work with another. The section "Features of GNU 'make'" contains information on which features came from which 'make' implementation; this gives the reader some historical context and information that not all 'make' programs are created equal. This information is especially valuable when working with a number of different 'make' utilities from different vendors (happily, GNU make runs on almost any platform most users are likely to encounter, and installing GNU make on a machine may be much easier than wrestling with the differences between 'make' implementations).

I refer to this book (or the info version from within emacs) regularly. I have found it extremely helpful while trying to figure out how another Makefile works, while trying to figure out how to accomplish a particular task with 'make', and just for general knowledge about the tool. I found the sections on suffix rules and pattern rules to be particularly informative.

One final note: by purchasing this book you are helping to support free software, as the book is published by GNU Press, the publishing department of the Free Software Foundation.

This book, which was made available on the Web for free, is here published in book form for those who prefer it that way. It is a great introduction to GNU Make for beginners who need to learn it, and a good reference for those more experienced.

After a brief overview of make in chapter 1, the authors move on to introduce makefiles in chapter 2 and 3. A general makefile consists of rules, with a target, dependencies, and commands. The authors do a great job of explaining makefiles and give a sample makefile explaining how an executable depends on object files, those depending themselves on C source files and header files. The use of 'make clean' is discussed also, along with the use of variables to simplify makefiles.

A more detailed discussion of rule writing is given in chapter 4, with the rule syntax outlined, and how to use wildcard characters in file names. The 'vpath' directive is discussed also. The authors show how to construct rules with multiple targets, and how to use dependencies that are not necessarily identical using static pattern rules. The chapter ends with a discussion of how to generate dependencies automatically.

The use of command echoing is explained in the next chapter on writing commands in rules, with the recursive use of 'make' as itself a command in a makefile. This is followed in chapter 6 by more details on the use of variables in makefiles. Readers knowing the shell very well will find this easy reading, but beginners will have to pay attention to the subtle uses of variable references and the difference between recursively expanded and simply expanded variables. The authors include an advanced section on variable reference for the more experienced reader. A detailed discussion on using conditional statements in makefiles is given.

The use of functions to do text processing is the subject of chapter 8 with the general syntax for function calls given. This is followed in chapter 9 by a discussion on how to actually execute a makefile.

The use of implicit rules to perform compilation in the usual way is discussed in chapter 10. This is my preference on how to use make and it is given a nice treatment here, with discussions on how to use implicit rules and introduces pattern rules.

Make can also update archive files, and this is discussed in chapter 11. The last chapters of the book give a list of features of GNU make as compared with other versions of make, and a list of incompatibilities of make with other versions. The conventions that must be respected in writing GNU make programs are discussed also.

This is an excellent book for software developers who want to write Makefile seriously. I have read other make books, including "Managing Projects with make" and "Mastering Make". None of them present core of Makefile to readers. From newsgroup comp.unix.shell one can know that there are still a lot of people who are struggling for writting their own real Makefile. Richard and Roland are national outstanding experts in this area!

Unless you've got your eyes closed, sooner or later you're going to have a software build that fails because a makefile doesn't do what you expected. Actually you probably just expected it to work, and didn't think you'd have to actually read and understand this language which isn't C, C#, Java, or Ruby. But, like the stuck bolt on the motorcycle in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, GNU Make is what stands between the Linux software developer and his compiled software project. In roughly 150 pages of tireless clarity, Stallman and McGrath explain every detail of GNU Make. Bonus chapters at the end include a good coding standard "Chapter 14: Makefile Conventions", and a quick reference. Which will actually be useful once you've read the book.

This is just a reference, written in a style a bit too terse. Not good as a tutorial.
For a wider picture and introduction, see Managing Projects With Make (I believe the newer editions only cover GNUMake, which is different than what BSD developers use).

In the ideal world a make script resides in the /usr/local/ directory branch. It invokes one or two include files found in the project directory for the purposes of customization. GNU Make is capable of this, and other feats. But, without reading the documentation, it's nearly impossible to extract the full power of this essential tool.

This book provides enough of an introduction to make that the newbie can immediately start crafting useful makefiles. For the consumate meddler, there is plenty of info on all kinds of features which allow make to be used to manage nearly every aspect of software and documentation creation.

Originally I downloaded the PDF and had it printed out at Kinkos. Having it in a book worked better. Do yourself a favor and get the book.