Introducing the make utility

make is a Unix program that orchestrates the building of all the parts – one or more source files, other generated files, libraries, and other processes – needed to create a valid program. make was first created in 1976 at AT&T Bell Labs because of a need to achieve consistent build results when one or more parts of complex programs changed as they were developed. It turns out there are many different versions of make. However, GNU make is the most widely distributed and is available for most computer systems.

make is rule-based – that is, it processes a set of rules that specify a build product, or target, and the actions needed to build that target. We’ll get into the details of rules in the Creating rules – targets, dependencies, and actions section.

By default, make operates on a file named makefile or Makefile where the rules are specified by you. The advantage of using a Makefile is that in a directory...