makemake

Stimulus:

Whenever I start coding a new program, one of the most important things is the Makefile. I always have to copy an existing makefile to the current directory and then modify it to my new settings. Then, as I create new .h and .c files, I always have to go in and edit the Makefile to reflect those changes. I decided to automate this process with a single command, makemake, that you can call at anytime that will create or update a Makefile in the current directory with up-to-the-second results of the files contained in your directory. Thus, I can create a new project directory and a new file.c, and then simply run makemake and I will have a Makefile. I then create file2.h and file2.c and then run makemake again and add those files to the Makefile. Programs like this exist elsewhere, but I wanted the updating functionality, and also the ability to control what the initial Makefile that is created looks like.

Description:

makemake is a utility that automatically generates a Makefile based on the files residing in the current directory. Initially, it creates the Makefile from the default Makefile here: Makefile.template

You can modify the default file that makemake will use to initially form the Makefile to any Makefile that you're comfortable with. makemake will update the Makefile to reflect whatever .c, .C, .cpp, and .h are in the current directory (or additional directories given on the command line). Whenever new files are created, simply run makemake and it will update the Makefile to reflect the new files.

Here is the basic usage of the program:

Usage: makemake [OPTION]...
Create a Makefile based on files in current directory.

 -n name                   The name of the executable created by the Makefile.
 -x file1 [file2] [...]    Exclude file(s) from being included in the Makefile.
 -m makefile               The Makefile to use, overriding both the default and
                            the Makefile in current directory.
 -h, --help                Print help (this screen).

 -d dir1 [dir2] [...]      Add files in these directories to the Makefile as
                            well.

When the following update commands are issued, only those filetypes listed 
will be updated.  The default is all types.
 -uc                       Update c files.
 -uC, -Ucpp                Update C or cpp files.
 -uh                       Update h files.

For example, in a directory for a Hearts card game I created, the following files exist: Card.h Deck.h Player.h Game.h Card.C Deck.C Player.C Game.C and in that directory another directory, containers, containing: list.C By running the program (initially giving it the n argument for the program name as it defaults to a.out), it creates a new Makefile:

[tommut@scoobs hearts]$ makemake -n hearts -d containers
[tommut@scoobs hearts]$ cat Makefile

PROG= hearts
CC= gcc
GCCFLAGS =      -g
CFLAGS =        -g
WARNFLAGS = -Wall -ansi 
WARN_ADDITIONAL = -Wshadow

HFILES= Card.h Deck.h Player.h Game.h
CFILES= 
CPPFILES= Card.C Deck.C Player.C Game.C containers/list.C

SOURCEFILES= $(CPPFILES) $(HFILES)	
OFILES=$(CPPFILES:.C=.o) $(CFILES:.c=.o)

all: $(PROG) 

SUFFIXES: .C .o 

.C.o:
	$(CC) -o $*.o -c $(GCCFLAGS) $(WARNFLAGS) $*.C

.cpp.o:
	$(CC) -o $*.o -c $(GCCFLAGS) $(WARNFLAGS) $*.cpp

.c.o:
	$(CC) -o $*.o -c $(GCCFLAGS) $(WARNFLAGS) $*.c

$(PROG): $(OFILES)  
	$(CC) -o $(PROG) $(OFILES) 

clean:
	rm -f $(OFILES) $(PROG)

View the source : makemake.c