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A handy makefile for simple C/C++ applications

Easymake

Introduction

Easymake is a handy makefile for C/C++ applications on Linux system. For simple applications, you don’t even need to write a single line of makefile code to build your target with easymake.

Features description:

  • Finds and compiles all C/C++ source files in the directory recursively (optional). Places the object files and target files in a separate directory.
  • Only re-compiles the changed and affected source files. That is, if you modify your header foo.h, all your source files with #include "foo.h" will be re-compiled.
  • Supports Simple unit testing.
  • Handles more than one entry point in the project.
  • Support both static library(libfoo.a) and shared library(libfoo.so) building.

NOTICE: Easymake is designed to be easy to use on simple applications, not as a highly flexible or extensible template. If you want more customization, you might need to look for a small and simple example for start.

Getting Started

Basics

git clone https://github.com/roxma/easymake
cd easymake/samples/basics
cp ../../easymake.mk Makefile
make
./bin/add  # if you rename add.cpp to myprogram.cpp, then you get ./bin/myprogram.cpp

basics

Unit Testing

Files with *_test.cpp or *_test.c pattern will be used for testing (inspired by golang).

unit_test

Multi Entries

multi_entries

Options

Easymake is trying to follow the Makefile Conventions (1) (2). The following options are supported.

  • CFLAGS Extra flags to give to the C compiler.
  • CXXFLAGS Extra flags to give to the C++ compiler.
  • LDFLAGS Extra flags to give to compilers when they are supposed to invoke the linker
  • LDLIBS Library flags or names given to compilers when they are supposed to invoke the linker
  • ARFLAGS Flags to give the archive-maintaining program; default cr

Recommended Style

In the GIFs, I simply copy easymake.mk into my souce code directory as a makefile. However, for code simplicity, I recommend the following style:

CXXFLAGS=-O2

# other options
# ...

include /path/to/easymake.mk