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make
Deduce the Commands
It is not necessary to spell out the commands for compiling the individual
C source files, because make
can figure them out: it has an
implicit rule for updating a `.o' file from a correspondingly
named `.c' file using a `cc -c' command. For example, it will
use the command `cc -c main.c -o main.o' to compile `main.c' into
`main.o'. We can therefore omit the commands from the rules for the
object files. See section Using Implicit Rules.
When a `.c' file is used automatically in this way, it is also automatically added to the list of prerequisites. We can therefore omit the `.c' files from the prerequisites, provided we omit the commands.
Here is the entire example, with both of these changes, and a variable
objects
as suggested above:
objects = main.o kbd.o command.o display.o \ insert.o search.o files.o utils.o edit : $(objects) cc -o edit $(objects) main.o : defs.h kbd.o : defs.h command.h command.o : defs.h command.h display.o : defs.h buffer.h insert.o : defs.h buffer.h search.o : defs.h buffer.h files.o : defs.h buffer.h command.h utils.o : defs.h .PHONY : clean clean : rm edit $(objects) |
This is how we would write the makefile in actual practice. (The complications associated with `clean' are described elsewhere. See 4.6 Phony Targets, and Errors in Commands.)
Because implicit rules are so convenient, they are important. You will see them used frequently.