https://makefiletutorial.com/#top Learn Makefiles With the tastiest examples Start the Tutorial Makefile Cookbook [github] [twitter] Star [pie_ingred] Makefile Tutorial [github] [twitter] Star 1. Getting Started 1. Why do Makefiles exist? 1. What alternatives are there to Make? 1. The versions and types of Make 1. Running the Examples 1. Makefile Syntax 1. The essence of Make 1. More quick examples 1. Make clean 1. Variables 1. Targets 1. The all target 1. Multiple targets 1. Automatic Variables and Wildcards 1. * Wildcard 1. % Wildcard 1. Automatic Variables 1. Fancy Rules 1. Implicit Rules 1. Static Pattern Rules 1. Static Pattern Rules and Filter 1. Pattern Rules 1. Double-Colon Rules 1. Commands and execution 1. Command Echoing/Silencing 1. Command Execution 1. Default Shell 1. Double dollar sign 1. Error handling with -k, -i, and - 1. Interrupting or killing make 1. Recursive use of make 1. Export, environments, and recursive make 1. Arguments to make 1. Variables Pt. 2 1. Flavors and modification 1. Command line arguments and override 1. List of commands and define 1. Target-specific variables 1. Pattern-specific variables 1. Conditional part of Makefiles 1. Conditional if/else 1. Check if a variable is empty 1. Check if a variable is defined 1. $(makeflags) 1. Functions 1. First Functions 1. String Substitution 1. The foreach function 1. The if function 1. The call function 1. The shell function 1. Other Features 1. Include Makefiles 1. The vpath Directive 1. Multiline 1. .phony 1. .delete_on_error 1. Makefile Cookbook I built this guide because I could never quite wrap my head around Makefiles. They seemed awash with hidden rules and esoteric symbols, and asking simple questions didn't yield simple answers. To solve this, I sat down for several weekends and read everything I could about Makefiles. I've condensed the most critical knowledge into this guide. Each topic has a brief description and a self contained example that you can run yourself. If you mostly understand Make, consider checking out the Makefile Cookbook, which has a template for medium sized projects with ample comments about what each part of the Makefile is doing. Good luck, and I hope you are able to slay the confusing world of Makefiles! Getting Started Why do Makefiles exist? Makefiles are used to help decide which parts of a large program need to be recompiled. In the vast majority of cases, C or C++ files are compiled. Other languages typically have their own tools that serve a similar purpose as Make. Make can also be used beyond compilation too, when you need a series of instructions to run depending on what files have changed. This tutorial will focus on the C/C++ compilation use case. Here's an example dependency graph that you might build with Make. If any file's dependencies changes, then the file will get recompiled: [dependency] What alternatives are there to Make? Popular C/C++ alternative build systems are SCons, CMake, Bazel, and Ninja. Some code editors like Microsoft Visual Studio have their own built in build tools. For Java, there's Ant, Maven, and Gradle. Other languages like Go and Rust have their own build tools. Interpreted languages like Python, Ruby, and Javascript don't require an analogue to Makefiles. The goal of Makefiles is to compile whatever files need to be compiled, based on what files have changed. But when files in interpreted languages change, nothing needs to get recompiled. When the program runs, the most recent version of the file is used. The versions and types of Make There are a variety of implementations of Make, but most of this guide will work on whatever version you're using. However, it's specifically written for GNU Make, which is the standard implementation on Linux and MacOS. All the examples work for Make versions 3 and 4, which are nearly equivalent other than some esoteric differences. Running the Examples To run these examples, you'll need a terminal and "make" installed. For each example, put the contents in a file called Makefile, and in that directory run the command make. Let's start with the simplest of Makefiles: hello: echo "Hello, World" Note: Makefiles must be indented using TABs and not spaces or make will fail. Here is the output of running the above example: $ make echo "Hello, World" Hello, World That's it! If you're a bit confused, here's a video that goes through these steps, along with describing the basic structure of Makefiles. Makefile Syntax A Makefile consists of a set of rules. A rule generally looks like this: targets: prerequisites command command command * The targets are file names, separated by spaces. Typically, there is only one per rule. * The commands are a series of steps typically used to make the target(s). These need to start with a tab character, not spaces. * The prerequisites are also file names, separated by spaces. These files need to exist before the commands for the target are run. These are also called dependencies The essence of Make Let's start with a hello world example: hello: echo "Hello, World" echo "This line will always print, because the file hello does not exist." There's already a lot to take in here. Let's break it down: * We have one target called hello * This target has two commands * This target has no prerequisites We'll then run make hello. As long as the hello file does not exist, the commands will run. If hello does exist, no commands will run. It's important to realize that I'm talking about hello as both a target and a file. That's because the two are directly tied together. Typically, when a target is run (aka when the commands of a target are run), the commands will create a file with the same name as the target. In this case, the hello target does not create the hello file . Let's create a more typical Makefile - one that compiles a single C file. But before we do, make a file called blah.c that has the following contents: // blah.c int main() { return 0; } Then create the Makefile (called Makefile, as always): blah: cc blah.c -o blah This time, try simply running make. Since there's no target supplied as an argument to the make command, the first target is run. In this case, there's only one target (blah). The first time you run this, blah will be created. The second time, you'll see make: 'blah' is up to date. That's because the blah file already exists. But there's a problem: if we modify blah.c and then run make, nothing gets recompiled. We solve this by adding a prerequisite: blah: blah.c cc blah.c -o blah When we run make again, the following set of steps happens: * The first target is selected, because the first target is the default target * This has a prerequisite of blah.c * Make decides if it should run the blah target. It will only run if blah doesn't exist, or blah.c is newer than blah This last step is critical, and is the essence of make. What it's attempting to do is decide if the prerequisites of blah have changed since blah was last compiled. That is, if blah.c is modified, running make should recompile the file. And conversely, if blah.c has not changed, then it should not be recompiled. To make this happen, it uses the filesystem timestamps as a proxy to determine if something has changed. This is a reasonable heuristic, because file timestamps typically will only change if the files are modified. But it's important to realize that this isn't always the case. You could, for example, modify a file, and then change the modified timestamp of that file to something old. If you did, Make would incorrectly guess that the file hadn't changed and thus could be ignored. Whew, what a mouthful. Make sure that you understand this. It's the crux of Makefiles, and might take you a few minutes to properly understand. Play around with the above examples or watch the video above if things are still confusing. More quick examples The following Makefile ultimately runs all three targets. When you run make in the terminal, it will build a program called blah in a series of steps: * Make selects the target blah, because the first target is the default target * blah requires blah.o, so make searches for the blah.o target * blah.o requires blah.c, so make searches for the blah.c target * blah.c has no dependencies, so the echo command is run * The cc -c command is then run, because all of the blah.o dependencies are finished * The top cc command is run, because all the blah dependencies are finished * That's it: blah is a compiled c program blah: blah.o cc blah.o -o blah # Runs third blah.o: blah.c cc -c blah.c -o blah.o # Runs second # Typically blah.c would already exist, but I want to limit any additional required files blah.c: echo "int main() { return 0; }" > blah.c # Runs first If you delete blah.c, all three targets will be rerun. If you edit it (and thus change the timestamp to newer than blah.o), the first two targets will run. If you run touch blah.o (and thus change the timestamp to newer than blah), then only the first target will run. If you change nothing, none of the targets will run. Try it out! This next example doesn't do anything new, but is nontheless a good additional example. It will always run both targets, because some_file depends on other_file, which is never created. some_file: other_file echo "This will always run, and runs second" touch some_file other_file: echo "This will always run, and runs first" Make clean clean is often used as a target that removes the output of other targets, but it is not a special word in Make. You can run make and make clean on this to create and delete some_file. Note that clean is doing two new things here: * It's a target that is not first (the default), and not a prerequisite. That means it'll never run unless you explicitly call make clean * It's not intended to be a filename. If you happen to have a file named clean, this target won't run, which is not what we want. See .PHONY later in this tutorial on how to fix this some_file: touch some_file clean: rm -f some_file Variables Variables can only be strings. You'll typically want to use :=, but = also works. See Variables Pt 2. Here's an example of using variables: files := file1 file2 some_file: $(files) echo "Look at this variable: " $(files) touch some_file file1: touch file1 file2: touch file2 clean: rm -f file1 file2 some_file Single or double quotes have no meaning to Make. They are simply characters that are assigned to the variable. Quotes are useful to shell/bash, though, and you need them in commands like printf. In this example, the two commands behave the same: a := one two # a is assigned to the string "one two" b := 'one two' # Not recommended. b is assigned to the string "'one two'" all: printf '$a' printf $b Reference variables using either ${} or $() x := dude all: echo $(x) echo ${x} # Bad practice, but works echo $x Targets The all target Making multiple targets and you want all of them to run? Make an all target. Since this is the first rule listed, it will run by default if make is called without specifying a target. all: one two three one: touch one two: touch two three: touch three clean: rm -f one two three Multiple targets When there are multiple targets for a rule, the commands will be run for each target. $@ is an automatic variable that contains the target name. all: f1.o f2.o f1.o f2.o: echo $@ # Equivalent to: # f1.o: # echo f1.o # f2.o: # echo f2.o Automatic Variables and Wildcards * Wildcard Both * and % are called wildcards in Make, but they mean entirely different things. * searches your filesystem for matching filenames. I suggest that you always wrap it in the wildcard function, because otherwise you may fall into a common pitfall described below. # Print out file information about every .c file print: $(wildcard *.c) ls -la $? * may be used in the target, prerequisites, or in the wildcard function. Danger: * may not be directly used in a variable definitions Danger: When * matches no files, it is left as it is (unless run in the wildcard function) thing_wrong := *.o # Don't do this! '*' will not get expanded thing_right := $(wildcard *.o) all: one two three four # Fails, because $(thing_wrong) is the string "*.o" one: $(thing_wrong) # Stays as *.o if there are no files that match this pattern :( two: *.o # Works as you would expect! In this case, it does nothing. three: $(thing_right) # Same as rule three four: $(wildcard *.o) % Wildcard % is really useful, but is somewhat confusing because of the variety of situations it can be used in. * When used in "matching" mode, it matches one or more characters in a string. This match is called the stem. * When used in "replacing" mode, it takes the stem that was matched and replaces that in a string. * % is most often used in rule definitions and in some specific functions. See these sections on examples of it being used: * Static Pattern Rules * Pattern Rules * String Substitution * The vpath Directive Automatic Variables There are many automatic variables, but often only a few show up: hey: one two # Outputs "hey", since this is the target name echo $@ # Outputs all prerequisites newer than the target echo $? # Outputs all prerequisites echo $^ touch hey one: touch one two: touch two clean: rm -f hey one two Fancy Rules Implicit Rules Make loves c compilation. And every time it expresses its love, things get confusing. Perhaps the most confusing part of Make is the magic/automatic rules that are made. Make calls these "implicit" rules. I don't personally agree with this design decision, and I don't recommend using them, but they're often used and are thus useful to know. Here's a list of implicit rules: * Compiling a C program: n.o is made automatically from n.c with a command of the form $(CC) -c $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) $^ -o $@ * Compiling a C++ program: n.o is made automatically from n.cc or n.cpp with a command of the form $(CXX) -c $(CPPFLAGS) $ (CXXFLAGS) $^ -o $@ * Linking a single object file: n is made automatically from n.o by running the command $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $^ $(LOADLIBES) $(LDLIBS) -o $@ The important variables used by implicit rules are: * CC: Program for compiling C programs; default cc * CXX: Program for compiling C++ programs; default g++ * CFLAGS: Extra flags to give to the C compiler * CXXFLAGS: Extra flags to give to the C++ compiler * CPPFLAGS: Extra flags to give to the C preprocessor * LDFLAGS: Extra flags to give to compilers when they are supposed to invoke the linker Let's see how we can now build a C program without ever explicitly telling Make how to do the compililation: CC = gcc # Flag for implicit rules CFLAGS = -g # Flag for implicit rules. Turn on debug info # Implicit rule #1: blah is built via the C linker implicit rule # Implicit rule #2: blah.o is built via the C compilation implicit rule, because blah.c exists blah: blah.o blah.c: echo "int main() { return 0; }" > blah.c clean: rm -f blah* Static Pattern Rules Static pattern rules are another way to write less in a Makefile, but I'd say are more useful and a bit less "magic". Here's their syntax: targets...: target-pattern: prereq-patterns ... commands The essence is that the given target is matched by the target-pattern (via a % wildcard). Whatever was matched is called the stem. The stem is then substituted into the prereq-pattern, to generate the target's prereqs. A typical use case is to compile .c files into .o files. Here's the manual way: objects = foo.o bar.o all.o all: $(objects) # These files compile via implicit rules foo.o: foo.c bar.o: bar.c all.o: all.c all.c: echo "int main() { return 0; }" > all.c %.c: touch $@ clean: rm -f *.c *.o all Here's the more efficient way, using a static pattern rule: objects = foo.o bar.o all.o all: $(objects) # These files compile via implicit rules # Syntax - targets ...: target-pattern: prereq-patterns ... # In the case of the first target, foo.o, the target-pattern matches foo.o and sets the "stem" to be "foo". # It then replaces the '%' in prereq-patterns with that stem $(objects): %.o: %.c all.c: echo "int main() { return 0; }" > all.c %.c: touch $@ clean: rm -f *.c *.o all Static Pattern Rules and Filter While I introduce functions later on, I'll foreshadow what you can do with them. The filter function can be used in Static pattern rules to match the correct files. In this example, I made up the .raw and .result extensions. obj_files = foo.result bar.o lose.o src_files = foo.raw bar.c lose.c all: $(obj_files) # Note: PHONY is important here. Without it, implicit rules will try to build the executable "all", since the prereqs are ".o" files. .PHONY: all # Ex 1: .o files depend on .c files. Though we don't actually make the .o file. $(filter %.o,$(obj_files)): %.o: %.c echo "target: $@ prereq: $<" # Ex 2: .result files depend on .raw files. Though we don't actually make the .result file. $(filter %.result,$(obj_files)): %.result: %.raw echo "target: $@ prereq: $<" %.c %.raw: touch $@ clean: rm -f $(src_files) Pattern Rules Pattern rules are often used but quite confusing. You can look at them as two ways: * A way to define your own implicit rules * A simpler form of static pattern rules Let's start with an example first: # Define a pattern rule that compiles every .c file into a .o file %.o : %.c $(CC) -c $(CFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS) $< -o $@ Pattern rules contain a '%' in the target. This '%' matches any nonempty string, and the other characters match themselves. '%' in a prerequisite of a pattern rule stands for the same stem that was matched by the '%' in the target. Here's another example: # Define a pattern rule that has no pattern in the prerequisites. # This just creates empty .c files when needed. %.c: touch $@ Double-Colon Rules Double-Colon Rules are rarely used, but allow multiple rules to be defined for the same target. If these were single colons, a warning would be printed and only the second set of commands would run. all: blah blah:: echo "hello" blah:: echo "hello again" Commands and execution Command Echoing/Silencing Add an @ before a command to stop it from being printed You can also run make with -s to add an @ before each line all: @echo "This make line will not be printed" echo "But this will" Command Execution Each command is run in a new shell (or at least the effect is as such) all: cd .. # The cd above does not affect this line, because each command is effectively run in a new shell echo `pwd` # This cd command affects the next because they are on the same line cd ..;echo `pwd` # Same as above cd ..; \ echo `pwd` Default Shell The default shell is /bin/sh. You can change this by changing the variable SHELL: SHELL=/bin/bash cool: echo "Hello from bash" Double dollar sign If you want a string to have a dollar sign, you can use $$. This is how to use a shell variable in bash or sh. Note the differences between Makefile variables and Shell variables in this next example. make_var = I am a make variable all: # Same as running "sh_var='I am a shell variable'; echo $sh_var" in the shell sh_var='I am a shell variable'; echo $$sh_var # Same as running "echo I am a make variable" in the shell echo $(make_var) Error handling with -k, -i, and - Add -k when running make to continue running even in the face of errors. Helpful if you want to see all the errors of Make at once. Add a - before a command to suppress the error Add -i to make to have this happen for every command. one: # This error will be printed but ignored, and make will continue to run -false touch one Interrupting or killing make Note only: If you ctrl+c make, it will delete the newer targets it just made. Recursive use of make To recursively call a makefile, use the special $(MAKE) instead of make because it will pass the make flags for you and won't itself be affected by them. new_contents = "hello:\n\ttouch inside_file" all: mkdir -p subdir printf $(new_contents) | sed -e 's/^ //' > subdir/makefile cd subdir && $(MAKE) clean: rm -rf subdir Export, environments, and recursive make When Make starts, it automatically creates Make variables out of all the environment variables that are set when it's executed. # Run this with "export shell_env_var='I am an environment variable'; make" all: # Print out the Shell variable echo $$shell_env_var # Print out the Make variable echo $(shell_env_var) The export directive takes a variable and sets it the environment for all shell commands in all the recipes: shell_env_var=Shell env var, created inside of Make export shell_env_var all: echo $(shell_env_var) echo $$shell_env_var As such, when you run the make command inside of make, you can use the export directive to make it accessible to sub-make commands. In this example, cooly is exported such that the makefile in subdir can use it. new_contents = "hello:\n\techo \$$(cooly)" all: mkdir -p subdir printf $(new_contents) | sed -e 's/^ //' > subdir/makefile @echo "---MAKEFILE CONTENTS---" @cd subdir && cat makefile @echo "---END MAKEFILE CONTENTS---" cd subdir && $(MAKE) # Note that variables and exports. They are set/affected globally. cooly = "The subdirectory can see me!" export cooly # This would nullify the line above: unexport cooly clean: rm -rf subdir You need to export variables to have them run in the shell as well. one=this will only work locally export two=we can run subcommands with this all: @echo $(one) @echo $$one @echo $(two) @echo $$two .EXPORT_ALL_VARIABLES exports all variables for you. .EXPORT_ALL_VARIABLES: new_contents = "hello:\n\techo \$$(cooly)" cooly = "The subdirectory can see me!" # This would nullify the line above: unexport cooly all: mkdir -p subdir printf $(new_contents) | sed -e 's/^ //' > subdir/makefile @echo "---MAKEFILE CONTENTS---" @cd subdir && cat makefile @echo "---END MAKEFILE CONTENTS---" cd subdir && $(MAKE) clean: rm -rf subdir Arguments to make There's a nice list of options that can be run from make. Check out --dry-run, --touch, --old-file. You can have multiple targets to make, i.e. make clean run test runs the clean goal, then run, and then test. Variables Pt. 2 Flavors and modification There are two flavors of variables: * recursive (use =) - only looks for the variables when the command is used, not when it's defined. * simply expanded (use :=) - like normal imperative programming -- only those defined so far get expanded # Recursive variable. This will print "later" below one = one ${later_variable} # Simply expanded variable. This will not print "later" below two := two ${later_variable} later_variable = later all: echo $(one) echo $(two) Simply expanded (using :=) allows you to append to a variable. Recursive definitions will give an infinite loop error. one = hello # one gets defined as a simply expanded variable (:=) and thus can handle appending one := ${one} there all: echo $(one) ?= only sets variables if they have not yet been set one = hello one ?= will not be set two ?= will be set all: echo $(one) echo $(two) Spaces at the end of a line are not stripped, but those at the start are. To make a variable with a single space, use $(nullstring) with_spaces = hello # with_spaces has many spaces after "hello" after = $(with_spaces)there nullstring = space = $(nullstring) # Make a variable with a single space. all: echo "$(after)" echo start"$(space)"end An undefined variable is actually an empty string! all: # Undefined variables are just empty strings! echo $(nowhere) Use += to append foo := start foo += more all: echo $(foo) String Substitution is also a really common and useful way to modify variables. Also check out Text Functions and Filename Functions. Command line arguments and override You can override variables that come from the command line by using override. Here we ran make with make option_one=hi # Overrides command line arguments override option_one = did_override # Does not override command line arguments option_two = not_override all: echo $(option_one) echo $(option_two) List of commands and define The define directive is not a function, though it may look that way. I've seen it used so infrequently that I won't go into details, but it's mainly used for defining canned recipes and also pairs well with the eval function. define/endef simply creates a variable that is assigned to a list of commands. Note here that it's a bit different than having a semi-colon between commands, because each is run in a separate shell, as expected. one = export blah="I was set!"; echo $$blah define two export blah="I was set!" echo $$blah endef all: @echo "This prints 'I was set'" @$(one) @echo "This does not print 'I was set' because each command runs in a separate shell" @$(two) Target-specific variables Variables can be assigned for specific targets all: one = cool all: echo one is defined: $(one) other: echo one is nothing: $(one) Pattern-specific variables You can assign variables for specific target patterns %.c: one = cool blah.c: echo one is defined: $(one) other: echo one is nothing: $(one) Conditional part of Makefiles Conditional if/else foo = ok all: ifeq ($(foo), ok) echo "foo equals ok" else echo "nope" endif Check if a variable is empty nullstring = foo = $(nullstring) # end of line; there is a space here all: ifeq ($(strip $(foo)),) echo "foo is empty after being stripped" endif ifeq ($(nullstring),) echo "nullstring doesn't even have spaces" endif Check if a variable is defined ifdef does not expand variable references; it just sees if something is defined at all bar = foo = $(bar) all: ifdef foo echo "foo is defined" endif ifndef bar echo "but bar is not" endif $(makeflags) This example shows you how to test make flags with findstring and MAKEFLAGS. Run this example with make -i to see it print out the echo statement. bar = foo = $(bar) all: # Search for the "-i" flag. MAKEFLAGS is just a list of single characters, one per flag. So look for "i" in this case. ifneq (,$(findstring i, $(MAKEFLAGS))) echo "i was passed to MAKEFLAGS" endif Functions First Functions Functions are mainly just for text processing. Call functions with $ (fn, arguments) or ${fn, arguments}. Make has a decent amount of builtin functions. bar := ${subst not, totally, "I am not superman"} all: @echo $(bar) If you want to replace spaces or commas, use variables comma := , empty:= space := $(empty) $(empty) foo := a b c bar := $(subst $(space),$(comma),$(foo)) all: @echo $(bar) Do NOT include spaces in the arguments after the first. That will be seen as part of the string. comma := , empty:= space := $(empty) $(empty) foo := a b c bar := $(subst $(space), $(comma) , $(foo)) all: # Output is ", a , b , c". Notice the spaces introduced @echo $(bar) String Substitution $(patsubst pattern,replacement,text) does the following: "Finds whitespace-separated words in text that match pattern and replaces them with replacement. Here pattern may contain a '%' which acts as a wildcard, matching any number of any characters within a word. If replacement also contains a '%', the '%' is replaced by the text that matched the '%' in pattern. Only the first '%' in the pattern and replacement is treated this way; any subsequent '%' is unchanged." (GNU docs) The substitution reference $(text:pattern=replacement) is a shorthand for this. There's another shorthand that replaces only suffixes: $(text:suffix= replacement). No % wildcard is used here. Note: don't add extra spaces for this shorthand. It will be seen as a search or replacement term. foo := a.o b.o l.a c.o one := $(patsubst %.o,%.c,$(foo)) # This is a shorthand for the above two := $(foo:%.o=%.c) # This is the suffix-only shorthand, and is also equivalent to the above. three := $(foo:.o=.c) all: echo $(one) echo $(two) echo $(three) The foreach function The foreach function looks like this: $(foreach var,list,text). It converts one list of words (separated by spaces) to another. var is set to each word in list, and text is expanded for each word. This appends an exclamation after each word: foo := who are you # For each "word" in foo, output that same word with an exclamation after bar := $(foreach wrd,$(foo),$(wrd)!) all: # Output is "who! are! you!" @echo $(bar) The if function if checks if the first argument is nonempty. If so, runs the second argument, otherwise runs the third. foo := $(if this-is-not-empty,then!,else!) empty := bar := $(if $(empty),then!,else!) all: @echo $(foo) @echo $(bar) The call function Make supports creating basic functions. You "define" the function just by creating a variable, but use the parameters $(0), $(1), etc. You then call the function with the special call builtin function. The syntax is $(call variable,param,param). $(0) is the variable, while $(1), $(2), etc. are the params. sweet_new_fn = Variable Name: $(0) First: $(1) Second: $(2) Empty Variable: $(3) all: # Outputs "Variable Name: sweet_new_fn First: go Second: tigers Empty Variable:" @echo $(call sweet_new_fn, go, tigers) The shell function shell - This calls the shell, but it replaces newlines with spaces! all: @echo $(shell ls -la) # Very ugly because the newlines are gone! Other Features Include Makefiles The include directive tells make to read one or more other makefiles. It's a line in the makefile that looks like this: include filenames... This is particularly useful when you use compiler flags like -M that create Makefiles based on the source. For example, if some c files includes a header, that header will be added to a Makefile that's written by gcc. I talk about this more in the Makefile Cookbook The vpath Directive Use vpath to specify where some set of prerequisites exist. The format is vpath can have a %, which matches any zero or more characters. You can also do this globallyish with the variable VPATH vpath %.h ../headers ../other-directory # Note: vpath allows blah.h to be found even though blah.h is never in the current directory some_binary: ../headers blah.h touch some_binary ../headers: mkdir ../headers # We call the target blah.h instead of ../headers/blah.h, because that's the prereq that some_binary is looking for # Typically, blah.h would already exist and you wouldn't need this. blah.h: touch ../headers/blah.h clean: rm -rf ../headers rm -f some_binary Multiline The backslash ("\") character gives us the ability to use multiple lines when the commands are too long some_file: echo This line is too long, so \ it is broken up into multiple lines .phony Adding .PHONY to a target will prevent Make from confusing the phony target with a file name. In this example, if the file clean is created, make clean will still be run. Technically, I should have have used it in every example with all or clean, but I didn't to keep the examples clean. Additionally, "phony" targets typically have names that are rarely file names, and in practice many people skip this. some_file: touch some_file touch clean .PHONY: clean clean: rm -f some_file rm -f clean .delete_on_error The make tool will stop running a rule (and will propogate back to prerequisites) if a command returns a nonzero exit status. DELETE_ON_ERROR will delete the target of a rule if the rule fails in this manner. This will happen for all targets, not just the one it is before like PHONY. It's a good idea to always use this, even though make does not for historical reasons. .DELETE_ON_ERROR: all: one two one: touch one false two: touch two false Makefile Cookbook Let's go through a really juicy Make example that works well for medium sized projects. The neat thing about this makefile is it automatically determines dependencies for you. All you have to do is put your C/C++ files in the src/ folder. # Thanks to Job Vranish (https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/08/26/makefile-c-projects/) TARGET_EXEC := final_program BUILD_DIR := ./build SRC_DIRS := ./src # Find all the C and C++ files we want to compile # Note the single quotes around the * expressions. The shell will incorrectly expand these otherwise, but we want to send the * directly to the find command. SRCS := $(shell find $(SRC_DIRS) -name '*.cpp' -or -name '*.c' -or -name '*.s') # Prepends BUILD_DIR and appends .o to every src file # As an example, ./your_dir/hello.cpp turns into ./build/./your_dir/hello.cpp.o OBJS := $(SRCS:%=$(BUILD_DIR)/%.o) # String substitution (suffix version without %). # As an example, ./build/hello.cpp.o turns into ./build/hello.cpp.d DEPS := $(OBJS:.o=.d) # Every folder in ./src will need to be passed to GCC so that it can find header files INC_DIRS := $(shell find $(SRC_DIRS) -type d) # Add a prefix to INC_DIRS. So moduleA would become -ImoduleA. GCC understands this -I flag INC_FLAGS := $(addprefix -I,$(INC_DIRS)) # The -MMD and -MP flags together generate Makefiles for us! # These files will have .d instead of .o as the output. CPPFLAGS := $(INC_FLAGS) -MMD -MP # The final build step. $(BUILD_DIR)/$(TARGET_EXEC): $(OBJS) $(CXX) $(OBJS) -o $@ $(LDFLAGS) # Build step for C source $(BUILD_DIR)/%.c.o: %.c mkdir -p $(dir $@) $(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@ # Build step for C++ source $(BUILD_DIR)/%.cpp.o: %.cpp mkdir -p $(dir $@) $(CXX) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CXXFLAGS) -c $< -o $@ .PHONY: clean clean: rm -r $(BUILD_DIR) # Include the .d makefiles. The - at the front suppresses the errors of missing # Makefiles. Initially, all the .d files will be missing, and we don't want those # errors to show up. -include $(DEPS)