JB Enterprises - Johan Bezem

Interim Management & Consulting

JB Enterprises - Blog

If you’re serious about GNU make, you have to read this

For easy reference, I've composed some links to websites you need to know about if you do more than just tweak some GNU makefiles.
First, there's the source of all: The project's pages on Savannah as maintained by Paul D. Smith, and the manual in PDF as published by the FSF.
The next resource is the website of Paul D. Smith himself, with some links, but especially the white papers are gold.
And the I've recently (re-)discovered Mr. Make, John Graham-Cumming: A column at CM Crossroads especially on GNU Make and its surroundings. I need not always share his opinion to value his tips and tricks.
Brad Appleton in his blog collected several links on the (dis-)advantages of recursive make, it's good to know the reasoning behind the topics, as well as the proposed solutions.
And, of course, even though it has been linked many times already, the paper that gave birth to my project (but to prove it wrong!), “Recursive Make Considered Harmful”, 1997 by Peter Miller.
Start with GNU make and its manual, take Paul's white papers to get it right, take John's tips to make it better and more efficient, and see for yourself what can be done using my concept ;-)

Happy Making!

June 10th, 2008