Make

Make is a utility to maintain groups of programs. Its purpose is to automatically determine which pieces of a large program need to be recompiled and issue the commands to recompile them. Generally, it can describe any task where some files must be updated automatically from others whenever the others change.

Make requires a Makefile to tell it what to do. The rest of this entry will contain details on Makefile syntax, best practices, and other useful information.

Reference: GNU Make Manual

Vocabulary

Make uses rules to describe the relationship between an output file and dependencies. In its simplest form, a rule looks like this:

target ... : prerequisites ...
	recipe
	...
	...