Articles

Tracing rule execution in GNU Make

Who hasn't wondered what exactly Make's log file output means. This article is about Makefile tracing. I cover tracing the execution of Makefile rules.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
December 1, 2008
Adding set operations to GNU Make

The new GMSL functions include ways of testing the relationship between sets and determining whether an individual element is in a set.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
November 2, 2008
The Basics: VPATH and vpath

Ask Mr. Make talks about the uses of VPATH and vpath.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
September 29, 2008
Learning Make with the Towers of Hanoi

The Towers of Hanoi puzzle consists of a small board with three pegs on it. On the left most peg a stack of discs is arranged in descending order of size: the largest disc is on the bottom.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
June 30, 2008
Make Clean: Usman's Law

Usman's Law (named after a smart coworker of mine who spent months working with customer Makefiles). make clean is intended to take you back to a state where everything will be rebuilt from scratch.   Often times it doesn't. Here's why.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
May 5, 2008
GNU Make User-Defined Functions

Creating GNU Make built-in functions is easy, but it does create a maintenance problem: the next time GNU Make is updated we'll need to port our changes to the new version.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
March 5, 2008
The Pitfalls and Benefits of GNU Make Parallelization

Many build processes run for hours with build managers commonly typing 'make' and going home for the night. GNU Make's solution to this problem is parallel execution, which is a simple command-line option that causes GNU Make to run jobs in parallel using the dependency in the Makefile to run in the correct order.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
March 1, 2008
The Basics of GNU Make

GNU Make user-defined functions can do a lot. Ask Mr. Make takes you on a quick your of the basics.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
February 2, 2008
GNU Make path handling

Ask Mr. Make discusses how GNU Make handles paths.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
December 4, 2007
GMSL 1.09: A look inside the tweaks and updates

I've written in the past about the GNU Make Standard Library open source project. This article outlines the changes made between v1.0.2 and the current release (v1.0.9) and discusses some of the techniques used to implement the GMSL.
John Graham-Cumming's picture John Graham-Cumming
October 1, 2007

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