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Robert William Mecklenburg

Andrew Oram

Managing Projects with GNU Make: The Power of GNU Make for Building Anything (Nutshell Handbooks) 3rd Edition

by Robert Mecklenburg (Author)

4.4 94 ratings

Part of: Nutshell Handbooks (9 books)

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The utility simply known as make is one of the most enduring features of both Unix and other operating systems. First invented in the 1970s, make still turns up to this day as the central engine in most programming projects; it even builds the Linux kernel. In the third edition of the classic Managing Projects with GNU make, readers will learn why this utility continues to hold its top position in project build software, despite many younger competitors. The premise behind make is simple: after you change source files and want to rebuild your program or other output files, make checks timestamps to see what has changed and rebuilds just what you need, without wasting time rebuilding other files. But on top of this simple principle, make layers a rich collection of options that lets you manipulate multiple directories, build different versions of programs for different platforms, and customize your builds in other ways. This edition focuses on the GNU version of make, which has deservedly become the industry standard. GNU make contains powerful extensions that are explored in this book. It is also popular because it is free software and provides a version for almost every platform, including a version for Microsoft Windows as part of the free Cygwin project. Managing Projects with GNU make, 3rd Edition provides guidelines on meeting the needs of large, modern projects. Also added are a number of interesting advanced topics such as portability, parallelism, and use with Java. Robert Mecklenburg, author of the third edition, has used make for decades with a variety of platforms and languages. In this book he zealously lays forth how to get your builds to be as efficient as possible, reduce maintenance, avoid errors, and thoroughly understand what make is doing. Chapters on C++ and Java provide makefile entries optimized for projects in those languages. The author even includes a discussion of the makefile used to build the book.

ISBN-10

0596006101
ISBN-13

978-0596006105
Edition

3rd
Publisher

O'Reilly Media
Publication date

December 28, 2004
Part of series

Nutshell Handbooks
Language

English
Dimensions

7 x 0.7 x 9.19 inches
Print length

300 pages
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Mecklenburg began using Unix as a student in 1977 and has been programming professionally for 23 years. His make experience started in 1982 at NASA with Unix version 7. Robert received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah in 1991. Since then, he has worked in many fields ranging from mechanical CAD to bioinformatics, and he brings his extensive experience in C++, Java, and Lisp to bear on the problems of project management with make.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 3rd edition (December 28, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 300 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0596006101
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0596006105
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.07 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.7 x 9.19 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #120,091 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #45 in Enterprise Applications
- #152 in Software Development (Books)
- #308 in Programming Languages (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 94 ratings

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Robert William Mecklenburg
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Andrew Oram
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Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly Media, a highly respected book
publisher and technology information provider. An employee of the
company since 1992, Andy currently specializes in open source,
networking, and software engineering, but his editorial output has
ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic
novel about teenage hackers. His work for O'Reilly includes the
influential 2001 title Peer-to-Peer, the 2005 ground-breaking book
Running Linux, and the 2007 best-seller Beautiful Code.
Andy also writes often for O'Reilly's Radar site
(http://radar.oreilly.com/) and other publications on policy issues
related to the Internet and on trends affecting technical innovation
and its effects on society. Print publications where his work has
appeared include The Economist, Communications of the ACM, Copyright
World, and Internet Law and Business. His web site is
http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/.
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Robert Mecklenburg
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Evan Nagle

A Deep-Dive for the Depth-Inclined

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 23, 2018

Verified Purchase

I've met a number of respectable developers who tell me that, "The Singularity won't leverage a Makefile." But those developers also sport chevron mustaches and drink pumpkin frappes all while deploying React monstrosities that help Millennials hire surrogate moms who are paid Dogecoin to search overpriced lofts for missing aqua socks.

I think, in reality, and in sum, this book is not a necessary addition to any respectable developer's bookshelf, especially since the majority of Makefiles never broach this level of complexity. But I do really love books like this, possibly for perverse reasons -- books that push a particular technology right to the cusp of its abusive breaking point. You learn something intangible when you see how far you can flex a language, much the same way as you learn something when you attach a racing spoiler to the back of your Honda Civic. It's not the vehicle but the driver who's transformed. It's not the point but the purview that we're after. Or, as my toddler daughter sometimes so elegantly espouses: you are what you Make of.

32 people found this helpful

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faumarz

An embedded developer point of view

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 13, 2009

Verified Purchase

I use GNU make in all my embedded firmware projects, under Linux, DOS and Windows.
This is a good book if you already know a basic use of "make". If you are completely new to make you should first search on-line documentation, I suppose.

I was a recursive-make fan before, but now I find that the non-recursive approach suggested here is really interesting. Probably the best is a mixed-architecture.

I don't like the implicit rules usage promoted: I prefer to define all the compiling options explicitly.

Make is a strange, very powerful non-procedural language for projects managing, and this book tries to explain its obscure characteristics.

If you plan to use the examples as a base for your own makefiles, take a look at the erratas on the O'Reilly website (there are some typos in the less common used procedures, personally I've found a lot in the make-depend parts).

10 people found this helpful

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JJ

Worthy purchase, print and digital

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 27, 2019

Verified Purchase

Learn make for real. Well structured and gentle, taking you from make begginer to journeyman. Totally worth it. If you learn this first, the other varieties of make will be fairly easy to adapt to.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 13, 2023

Verified Purchase

So if you already know how to use make (which means you probably don’t need this book) than this book is for you.
I’m honestly trying to come up with words to describe just how convoluted of a mess this book is. There’s no gradual build up of information, each topic adding on to the previous, it’s sporadic and chaotic. It jumps around making a ton of assumptions about the readers knowledge.
Would absolutely not recommend this book to anyone trying to get a better grasp on make. If anything this book has confused me more, and sent me down a rabbit hole of understanding lexical analysis, just so I can get through the first example.

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Stephen Rowe

This book was a lifesaver

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 28, 2005

Verified Purchase

I'm taking an operating systems class. As part of that class, we had to modify an existing operating system. To do that required modifying the makefile system to add our modules. I tried understanding make from the man pages and tutorials on the web. They are either a reference or cover too small a subset of tasks. This book covers the topic thoroughly but in an instructional manner which is easy to learn from. My only complaint is that sometimes there is functionality talked about without accompanying examples. That makes it hard to understand how things work together.

8 people found this helpful

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K

Terrible

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2009

Verified Purchase

I have almost no experience with writing makefiles. All I've done is edit existing makefiles until they work without really knowing what I am doing. I bought this book to fill in my knowledge. There seems to be a lot of information in this book. Unfortunately, there is a lot of information not in the book that makes it difficult to follow his examples. For example, on p. 5 there is text in there that makes up the file 'lexer.l', but the author doesn't say this. He simply puts that text on the page, calls it a 'scanner', then I see something called 'lexer.l' in the makefile he is using. It took me a while to figure out that the 10 or so lines of text he called a 'scanner' was in fact 'lexer.l'.

The author continually does this for at least the first 20 pages, where it took me hours to figure out what files he used and what were supposed to be in the files. This should have only taken me as long as it takes to type the files into the computer. There are supposed to be five files: counter.h lexer.h count_words.c counter.c and lexer.l. I don't understand why the auther cannot simply say "the text below define *.*", then write it out, instead of making the reader guess at what he is talking about. On page 20 he talks about refactoring the 'main' program, but what he really means is creating a new file called 'counter.c' not rewriting the 'main' program in 'count_words.c'.

It's too bad the author has decided to write in such an ambiguous style because his explainations of make features are very good, unfortunately, I can't verify this using his examples because he thinks his readers can read his mind.

The frustration caused by this lack of explicitness for his examples is the reason I give this book one star. Instead of simply using his examples, I have to figure out what the heck he is talking about, then try to use them the way he is. I'm spending orders of magnitudes more on this guessing than I am on learning make, which is why this book sucks. I'm only on page 20 and all ready I don't really want to use this book. I guess if you all ready know how to use make and just want a reference, this book is probably fine as you have plenty of your own examples to follow. But I do not.

62 people found this helpful

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Ralph

Nice full fledged Make resource

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 23, 2019

Verified Purchase

Yes the book contains most probably more than what you need. Still I find it useful to properly learn the tool.

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Mac

Good book. The information is there. The examples are not as clear as I would like.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

All the information you need is there. However, I think the examples are little lacking. If you already know make, this book will help you become an expert. If you are a beginner, it will be a bit dense. No matter what I think, though, there isn't a better book on make.

One person found this helpful

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Patrice Levesque

A great introduction to make

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 20, 2010

Verified Purchase

I found the complexity level of this book just right for me; I've been toying with simple Makefiles for years and couldn't figure out some inconsistencies. The author explains pitfalls and common mistakes, the Makefile parsing process and the subtleties of variable assignment, which I found very valuable. I now feel ready to plunge in sterile reference manuals. Though it doesn't address autoconf which is possibly the most popular user of make, the book packs enough examples and thorough explanations to be worth its weight.

Chris Maguire

Great Reference

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

I've got a lot of bookmarks in this book and use it regularly when I'm working with Make.

Mark Collins-cope

Good book. All hidden details revealed.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 22, 2023

Verified Purchase

Tells you what you need to know. Well explained. Easy to use as ref.

Oodini

Bon livre

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on July 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

Le début est un peu raide, pour qui n'est pas un habitué d'Unix/Linux : pour le premier exemple, ne pas hésiter à se documenter sur le fonctionnement de Flex ; ça ne sera pas du temps perdu.

Je n'avais qu'une connaissance superficielle de make, et ce livre m'a beaucoup aidé. Il conviendra bien au débutant, nonobstant ce qui est indiqué plus haut.

Un conseil : prendre quelques notes en cours de lectures, car tout n'est pas facilement présent dans l'index, pourtant bien fait (car certaines choses sont difficilement indexable).

Ce livre ne cherche pas l'exhaustif, mais plutôt la pédagogie, et balaie l'essentiel.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Not sure if 2 stars is for me or the book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 9, 2011

Verified Purchase

It could just be me. I'm on page 90, having hacked my way through some seriously dense bash scripting/make/java compilation combinations, and I still don't know how to set up a basic Makefile for a relatively simple C++ project with different directories for source, header, and object files.
Maybe it isn't simple. Maybe I've picked the wrong tool with make, and am taking it out on the book.
But I can't believe that I need to read about all the arcane rules behind the 2-stage variable & macro expansion, and all the ugly control structures that make-as-a-sub-par-programming-language-rather-than-build-tool possesses, before I see a make file that compiles an average C++ project.
If I do, then I offer my apologies to the author, for I have indeed picked the wrong tool, but as it stands, it feels like the author's enthusiasm to communicate the obscure minutae of make has completely obfuscated how one might practically use it. You get the impression that he prefers coding in make to coding in whatever real language a project is supposed to be built with.
Man, I wish the Pragmatic Programmers had written a make book!

7 people found this helpful

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