Customer Reviews

Managing Projects with make

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was a good reference book when it originally came out. But these days, who doesn't use GNU make? O'Reilly should come out with either an updated version that covers GNU make as well as vanilla make or they should release two separate books.

I'm an ardent consumer of O'Reilly books, but I was quite disappointed with the quality of their make book. I read it about 5 years ago with a rudimentary understanding of make, yet it did little to further explain things I already knew.

I recently read the GNU make documentation and clarified many fuzzy make concepts. I recommend it over the ORA make book. Besides, GNU make is cooler than vanilla make. 8-)

I found managing projects with make to be below the usual very high quality of O'Reilly books. That is to say if it was by some other publisher I would be pleased with it, but O'Reilly has so consistently produced very high quality technical books that I was disappointed by the lack of depth.

I still feel reasonably safe in recommending it as a good book to learn how to use make, but that's all it is. It would be nice to include more information about how use it for applications beyond simply compiling c, assembly, and lib's into applications.

Unfortunately there is nothing quite like this book (at least that I have ever found) for Windows nmake. In a former life I was a Unix programmer and I found this book invaluable, especially for creating custom suffix rules and recursive makefiles. Now that I am a Windows developer, I still refer to this book on occasion.

There is a lot of information packed in this book. Read it carefully, as it is easy to miss important information. I have marked up my copy with a highlighter pen and have a number of Post-It's stuck on those important sections. Perhaps a better layout, with wider margins and bulleted notes in the margins would have made it more readable and easier to find things after it has sat on the bookshelf for a while.

For the most part this book also applies to the Microsoft nmake utility (comes with Visual C++). I have yet to find anything equivalent for nmake, and the MSDN information on nmake is severely lacking. Apparently the folks at Microsoft believe everyone uses the built-in development environment in VC++, but for managing and building complex projects it is absolutely necessary to write and maintain your own makefiles.

Before reading this book, I had already had some experience with 'make' utilities through my experiences with the OpenVMS Module Management System (MMS) facility (Compaq's version of make). At our site, We use MMS and Make not only for product compilation, but also for product versioning and installation as well. Although this book contains more material then the UNIX man pages, this small book (<125 pages) really didn't expand my knowledge of make (I found the OpenVMS MMS user documentation more enlightening, although still lacking). This book tries to be all things to all people, and ends up being a few things to some. For the next edition, the authors should consider expanding the content to include more real-world examples, shortcuts and tricks. The book should also place more emphasis on using the 'makedepend' utility as well as maintaining products with multiple versioned subsystems.

Maybe this is a good book, but you wouldn't be able to tell that by the index. Something as basic as using conditionals with make(if .. then) should be indexed for easy referance. I've had to root through the book for various situations like this because the index was so sparse. I have had much more luck using the GNUmake online manuals which are free.

Followed comments from previous reviewers, I look make infomation at gnu site, but I cannot understand make. After I take a look at this book, in half day I understand almost all the make tricks. This book explain make clearly. Highly recommended.

Excellent book for learning the syntax of make, make's variable conventions, and environmental variable settings. The book gives a good base for understanding the makefile format and flow. Highly recommended for those who don't understand the Makefile approach and need an understanding of exsisting Makefiles.

The author does an excellent job of covering a complex subject. However, from the view of a fairly new unix user assigned to manage a complex project, the book did not introduce and explain the subject in as clear a manner as needed. It is a book that must be read more than once in order for all of the pieces to come together. The use of object libraries was treated on only a couple of pages but not to the depth needed for this user to produce make files that will efficiently compile and link the source files and libraries used in his project. David Hamill

The style of the book is somewhat dry, but it covers all of the information that one would expect of a thorough book on the subject. Clear comparisons are made between different versions of make, and test scripts are available for download to test your version of make.

However, a section is needed which provides a clear answer to the question "What features can I use to have truly portable makefiles?" Also, a commons tips and tricks section, which could cover some of the ways that make can be used to accomplish other tasks (related to the building of an application). The information is all there, but the organization needs some work.

Overall, a good book. Read it once, and then keep it close by on your shelf for reference. Anyone who has had to re-write makefiles because of porting issues will find this book very useful.