MakeGen - Quickly generate makefile for C/C++ source files.

Usage

makegen.py [options] <source files>

Options

-h	help
-o output	name of the output executable or library
-n name	name of the project
-f format	format of the output makefile. For a list of available output formats, see Formats.
-l library	Link against library, same as gcc. example: -lpthread.
-D definition	Add definition to c preprocessor definitions, same as gcc. example: -DNULL=0
--cflags=flags	Pass flags to c compiler. This option only works in make and automake formats. example: --cflags='-g -O2 -Wall'
--cxxflags=flags
	Pass flags to c++ compiler. This option only works in make and automake formats. example: --cxxflags='-g -O2 -Wall'
--ldflags=flags
	Pass flags to linker. This option only works in make and automake formats. example: --ldflags='-pg'
-L path	Add path to library path. This option only works in make format.
-I path	Add path to include path. This option only works in make format.

Formats

Makegen currently supports generating makefile in the following formats:

make

Generate Makefile for GNU Make using GCC toolchain.

cmake

Generate a CMake project file (CMakeLists.txt).

automake

Generate Makefile.am.

Examples

# create Makefile to compile main.c and library.c into a.out
makegen.py -o a.out main.c library.c library.h

# link libpthread and #define THREAD_COUNT 4
makegen.py -DTHREAD_COUNT=4 -lpthread main.c

# create CMakeLists.txt
makegen.py -f cmake main.c foo.c bar.c foo.h bar.h

Description

Writing makefile for C/C++ projects can be a repetitive and cumbersome work. If an included header is omitted in the dependency list, the source file may not be rebuilt when the header is modified. This may cause runtime failure because of inconsistencies between object files. On the other hand, superfluous dependency list will significantly slow down the build process.

The problem can be addressed by using building systems like CMake or Autotools. These tools are invaluable in C/C++ project development, but they can be too complex or may introduce additional dependency for very simple projects. For example, autotools requires at least 2 configuration files (one for autoconf and the other for automake) and has a rather complex workflow. Using CMake is easier but requires cmake to be installed on the user's system.

To balance between hand-written makefiles and full-fledged build systems, I wrote this tool to ease the process of writing simple makefiles. It automatically generates makefiles that are as simple and readable as those hand-written ones. The generated makefile does not depend on this script.

Makegen doesn't support custom targets (e.g. generating source files by perl scripts). If you need such flexibility, please use a real build system instead. If you decide to convert to cmake or autotools, you can generate CMakeLists.txt and Makefile.am by makegen -f cmake <srcfiles> and makegen -f automake <srcfiles> respectively.

Copyright

Copyright 2013 Che-Huai Lin

This work is licensed under CC BY 3.0.