Make File -Dependencies

Dependencies

The principle by which make operates was described to you in the last section. It creates programs according to the file dependencies. For example, we now know that in order to create an object file, program.o, we require at least the file program.c. (There may be other dependencies, such as a .h file.)

This section involves drawing what are called "dependency graphs", which are very similar to the diagrams given in the previous section. As you become proficient using make, you probably will not need to draw these diagrams, but it is important to get a feel for what you are doing.

Dependency graphs

This graph shown in the figure is a program which is made up of 5 source files, called data.c, data.h, io.c, io.h, and main.c. At the top is the final result, a program called project1. The lines which radiate downwards from a file are the other files which it depends on. For example, to create main.o, the three files data.h, io.h, and main.c are needed.

How dependency works

Suppose that you have gone through the process of compiling the program, and while you are testing the program, you realize that one function in io.c has a bug in it. You edit io.c to fix the bug.

The figure above shows io.c outlined in red. By going up the graph, you notice that io.o needs to be updated because io.c has changed. Similarly, because io.o has changed, project1 needs to be updated as well.

How does make do it?

The make program gets its dependency "graph" from a text file called makefile or Makefile which resides in the same directory as the source files. Make checks the modification times of the files, and whenever a file becomes "newer" than something that depends on it, (in other words, modified) it runs the compiler accordingly.

For example, the previous page explained io.c was changed. If you edit io.c, it becomes "newer" than io.o, meaning that make must run cc -c io.c to create a new io.o, then run cc data.o main.o io.o -o project1 for project1.