If you want to run or update a task when certain files are updated, the make utility can come in handy. The make utility requires a file, Makefile (or makefile), which defines a set of tasks to be executed. You may have used make to compile a program from source code. Most open-source projects use make to compile a final executable binary, which can then be installed using make install.

In this article, we’ll explore make and Makefile using basic and advanced examples. Before you start, ensure that make is installed in your system.

Basic examples

Let’s start by printing the classic “Hello World” on the terminal. Create an empty directory myproject containing a file Makefile with this content:

say_hello:
        echo "Hello World"

Now run the file by typing make inside the directory myproject. The output will be:

$ make
echo "Hello World"
Hello World

In the example above, say_hello behaves like a function name, as in any programming language. This is called the target. The prerequisites or dependencies follow the target. For the sake of simplicity, we have not defined any prerequisites in this example. The command echo "Hello World" is called the recipe. The recipe uses prerequisites to make a target. The target, prerequisites, and recipes together make a rule.

To summarize, below is the syntax of a typical rule:

target: prerequisites
<TAB> recipe

As an example, a target might be a binary file that depends on prerequisites (source files). On the other hand, a prerequisite can also be a target that depends on other dependencies:

final_target: sub_target final_target.c
        Recipe_to_create_final_target

sub_target: sub_target.c
        Recipe_to_create_sub_target

It is not necessary for the target to be a file; it could be just a name for the recipe, as in our example. We call these “phony targets.”

Going back to the example above, when make was executed, the entire command echo "Hello World" was displayed, followed by actual command output. We often don’t want that. To suppress echoing the actual command, we need to start echo with @:

say_hello:
        @echo "Hello World"

Now try to run make again. The output should display only this:

$ make
Hello World

Let’s add a few more phony targets: generate and clean to the Makefile:

say_hello:
        @echo "Hello World"

generate:
        @echo "Creating empty text files..."
        touch file-{1..10}.txt

clean:
        @echo "Cleaning up..."
        rm *.txt

If we try to run make after the changes, only the target say_hello will be executed. That’s because only the first target in the makefile is the default target. Often called the default goal, this is the reason you will see all as the first target in most projects. It is the responsibility of all to call other targets. We can override this behavior using a special phony target called .DEFAULT_GOAL.

Let’s include that at the beginning of our makefile:

.DEFAULT_GOAL := generate

This will run the target generate as the default:

$ make
Creating empty text files...
touch file-{1..10}.txt

As the name suggests, the phony target .DEFAULT_GOAL can run only one target at a time. This is why most makefiles include all as a target that can call as many targets as needed.

Let’s include the phony target all and remove .DEFAULT_GOAL:

all: say_hello generate

say_hello:
        @echo "Hello World"

generate:
        @echo "Creating empty text files..."
        touch file-{1..10}.txt

clean:
        @echo "Cleaning up..."
        rm *.txt

Before running make, let’s include another special phony target, .PHONY, where we define all the targets that are not files. make will run its recipe regardless of whether a file with that name exists or what its last modification time is. Here is the complete makefile:

.PHONY: all say_hello generate clean

all: say_hello generate

say_hello:
        @echo "Hello World"

generate:
        @echo "Creating empty text files..."
        touch file-{1..10}.txt

clean:
        @echo "Cleaning up..."
        rm *.txt

The make should call say_hello and generate:

$ make
Hello World
Creating empty text files...
touch file-{1..10}.txt

It is a good practice not to call clean in all or put it as the first target. clean should be called manually when cleaning is needed as a first argument to make:

$ make clean
Cleaning up...
rm *.txt

Now that you have an idea of how a basic makefile works and how to write a simple makefile, let’s look at some more advanced examples.

Advanced examples

Variables

In the above example, most target and prerequisite values are hard-coded, but in real projects, these are replaced with variables and patterns.

The simplest way to define a variable in a makefile is to use the = operator. For example, to assign the command gcc to a variable CC:

CC = gcc

This is also called a recursive expanded variable, and it is used in a rule as shown below:

hello: hello.c
    ${CC} hello.c -o hello

As you may have guessed, the recipe expands as below when it is passed to the terminal:

gcc hello.c -o hello

Both ${CC} and $(CC) are valid references to call gcc. But if one tries to reassign a variable to itself, it will cause an infinite loop. Let’s verify this:

CC = gcc
CC = ${CC}

all:
    @echo ${CC}

Running make will result in:

$ make
Makefile:8: *** Recursive variable 'CC' references itself (eventually).  Stop.

To avoid this scenario, we can use the := operator (this is also called the simply expanded variable). We should have no problem running the makefile below:

CC := gcc
CC := ${CC}

all:
    @echo ${CC}

Patterns and functions

The following makefile can compile all C programs by using variables, patterns, and functions. Let’s explore it line by line:

# Usage:
# make        # compile all binary
# make clean  # remove ALL binaries and objects

.PHONY = all clean

CC = gcc                        # compiler to use

LINKERFLAG = -lm

SRCS := $(wildcard *.c)
BINS := $(SRCS:%.c=%)

all: ${BINS}

%: %.o
        @echo "Checking.."
        ${CC} ${LINKERFLAG} $< -o $@

%.o: %.c
        @echo "Creating object.."
        ${CC} -c $<

clean:
        @echo "Cleaning up..."
        rm -rvf *.o ${BINS}

• Lines starting with # are comments.
• Line .PHONY = all clean defines phony targets all and clean.
• Variable LINKERFLAG defines flags to be used with gcc in a recipe.
• SRCS := $(wildcard *.c): $(wildcard pattern) is one of the functions for filenames. In this case, all files with the .c extension will be stored in a variable SRCS.
• BINS := $(SRCS:%.c=%): This is called a substitution reference. In this case, if SRCS has values 'foo.c bar.c', BINS will have 'foo bar'.
• Line all: ${BINS}: The phony target all calls values in${BINS} as individual targets.
• Rule:%: %.o
    @echo “Checking..”
    ${CC} ${LINKERFLAG} $< -o $@Let’s look at an example to understand this rule. Suppose foo is one of the values in ${BINS}. Then % will match foo(% can match any target name). Below is the rule in its expanded form:foo: foo.o
    @echo “Checking..”
    gcc -lm foo.o -o fooAs shown, % is replaced by foo. $< is replaced by foo.o. $< is patterned to match prerequisites and $@ matches the target. This rule will be called for every value in ${BINS}
• Rule:%.o: %.c
    @echo “Creating object..”
    ${CC} -c $<Every prerequisite in the previous rule is considered a target for this rule. Below is the rule in its expanded form:foo.o: foo.c
    @echo “Creating object..”
    gcc -c foo.c
• Finally, we remove all binaries and object files in target clean.

Below is the rewrite of the above makefile, assuming it is placed in the directory having a single file foo.c:

# Usage:
# make        # compile all binary
# make clean  # remove ALL binaries and objects

.PHONY = all clean

CC = gcc                        # compiler to use

LINKERFLAG = -lm

SRCS := foo.c
BINS := foo

all: foo

foo: foo.o
        @echo "Checking.."
        gcc -lm foo.o -o foo

foo.o: foo.c
        @echo "Creating object.."
        gcc -c foo.c

clean:
        @echo "Cleaning up..."
        rm -rvf foo.o foo

Why do Makefiles exist?

Makefiles are used to help decide which parts of a large program need to be recompiled. In the vast majority of cases, C or C++ files are compiled. Other languages typically have their own tools that serve a similar purpose as Make. It can be used beyond programs too when you need a series of instructions to run depending on what files have changed. This tutorial will focus on the C/C++ compilation use case.

Here’s an example dependency graph that you might build with Make. If any file’s dependencies change, then the file will get recompiled:

What alternatives are there to Make?

Popular C/C++ alternative build systems are SCons, CMake, Bazel, and Ninja. Some code editors like Microsoft Visual Studio have their own built-in build tools. For Java, there’s Ant, Maven, and Gradle. Other languages like Go and Rust have their own build tools.

Interpreted languages like Python, Ruby, and Javascript don’t require an analogue to Makefiles. The goal of Makefiles is to compile whatever files need to be compiled, based on what files have changed. But when files in interpreted languages change, nothing needs to get recompiled. When the program runs, the most recent version of the file is used.

The versions and types of Make

There are a variety of implementations of Make, but most of this guide will work on whatever version you’re using. However, it’s specifically written for GNU Make, which is the standard implementation on Linux and macOS. All the examples work for Make versions 3 and 4, which are nearly equivalent other than some esoteric differences.

Running the Examples

To run these examples, you’ll need a terminal and “make” installed. For each example, put the contents in a file called Makefile, and in that directory run the command make. Let’s start with the simplest of Makefiles:

hello:
    echo "hello world"

Here is the output of running the above example:

$ make
echo "hello world"
hello world

That’s it! If you’re a bit confused, here’s a video that goes through these steps, along with describing the basic structure of Makefiles.https://www.youtube.com/embed/zeEMISsjO38

Makefile Syntax

A Makefile consists of a set of rules. A rule generally looks like this:

targets: prerequisites
   command
   command
   command

• The targets are file names, separated by spaces. Typically, there is only one per rule.
• The commands are a series of steps typically used to make the target(s). These need to start with a tab character, not spaces.
• The prerequisites are also file names, separated by spaces. These files need to exist before the commands for the target are run. These are also called dependencies

Beginner Examples

The following Makefile has three separate rules. When you run make blah in the terminal, it will build a program called blah in a series of steps:

• Make is given blah as the target, so it first searches for this target
• blah requires blah.o, so make searches for the blah.o target
• blah.o requires blah.c, so make searches for the blah.c target
• blah.c has no dependencies, so the echo command is run
• The cc -c command is then run because all of the blah.o dependencies are finished
• The top cc command is run because all the blah dependencies are finished
• That’s it: blah is a compiled c program

blah: blah.o
    cc blah.o -o blah # Runs third

blah.o: blah.c
    cc -c blah.c -o blah.o # Runs second

blah.c:
    echo "int main() { return 0; }" > blah.c # Runs first

This makefile has a single target, called some_file. The default target is the first target, so in this case, some_file will run.

some_file:
    echo "This line will always print"

This file will make some_file the first time, and the second time notice it’s already made, resulting in make: 'some_file' is up to date.

some_file:
    echo "This line will only print once"
    touch some_file

Here, the target some_file “depends” on other_file. When we run make, the default target (some_file, since it’s first) will get called. It will first look at its list of dependencies, and if any of them are older, it will first run the targets for those dependencies, and then run itself. The second time this is run, neither target will run because both targets exist.

some_file: other_file
    echo "This will run second, because it depends on other_file"
    touch some_file

other_file:
    echo "This will run first"
    touch other_file

This will always run both targets because some_file depends on other_file, which is never created.

some_file: other_file
    touch some_file

other_file:
    echo "nothing"

clean is often used as a target that removes the output of other targets, but it is not a special word in make.

some_file: 
    touch some_file

clean:
    rm -f some_file

Variables

Variables can only be strings. Here’s an example of using them:

files = file1 file2
some_file: $(files)
    echo "Look at this variable: " $(files)
    touch some_file

file1:
    touch file1
file2:
    touch file2

clean:
    rm -f file1 file2 some_file

Reference variables using ${} or $()

x = dude

all:
    echo $(x)
    echo ${x}

    # Bad practice, but works
    echo $x

Targets

The all target

Making multiple targets and you want all of them to run? Make an all target.

all: one two three

one:
    touch one
two:
    touch two
three:
    touch three

clean:
    rm -f one two three

Multiple targets

When there are multiple targets for a rule, the commands will be run for each target
$@ is an automatic variable that contains the target name.

all: f1.o f2.o

f1.o f2.o:
    echo $@
# Equivalent to:
# f1.o
#     echo $@
# f2.o
#     echo $@

Automatic Variables and Wildcards

* Wildcard

Both * and % are called wildcards in Make, but they mean entirely different things. * searches your filesystem for matching filenames. I suggest that you always wrap it in the wildcard function, otherwise, you may fall into a common pitfall described below. It’s oddly unhelpful and I find it more confusing than useful.

# Print out file information about every .c file
print: $(wildcard *.c)
    ls -la  $?

* may be used in the target, prerequisites, or in the wildcard function.

Danger: * may not be directly used in a variable definitions

Danger: When * matches no files, it is left as it is (unless run in the wildcard function)

thing_wrong := *.o # Don't do this! '*' will not get expanded
thing_right := $(wildcard *.o)

all: one two three four

# Fails, because $(thing_wrong) is the string "*.o"
one: $(thing_wrong)

# Stays as *.o if there are no files that match this pattern :(
two: *.o 

# Works as you would expect! In this case, it does nothing.
three: $(thing_right)

# Same as rule three
four: $(wildcard *.o)

% Wildcard

% is really useful, but is somewhat confusing because of the variety of situations it can be used in.

• When used in “matching” mode, it matches one or more characters in a string. This match is called the stem.
• When used in “replacing” mode, it takes the stem that was matched and replaces that in a string.
• % is most often used in rule definitions and in some specific functions.

See these sections on examples of it being used:

• Static Pattern Rules
• Pattern Rules
• String Substitution
• The vpath Directive

Automatic Variables

There are many automatic variables, but often only a few show up:

hey: one two
    # Outputs "hey", since this is the first target
    echo $@

    # Outputs all prerequisites newer than the target
    echo $?

    # Outputs all prerequisites
    echo $^

    touch hey

one:
    touch one

two:
    touch two

clean:
    rm -f hey one two

Fancy Rules

Implicit Rules

Make loves c compilation. And every time it expresses its love, things get confusing. Perhaps the most confusing part of Make is the magic/automatic rules that are made. Make calls these “implicit” rules. I don’t personally agree with this design decision, and I don’t recommend using them, but they’re often used and are thus useful to know. Here’s a list of implicit rules:

• Compiling a C program: n.o is made automatically from n.c with a command of the form $(CC) -c $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS)
• Compiling a C++ program: n.o is made automatically from n.cc or n.cpp with a command of the form $(CXX) -c $(CPPFLAGS) $(CXXFLAGS)
• Linking a single object file: n is made automatically from n.o by running the command $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) n.o $(LOADLIBES) $(LDLIBS)

The important variables used by implicit rules are:

• CC: Program for compiling C programs; default cc
• CXX: Program for compiling C++ programs; default g++
• CFLAGS: Extra flags to give to the C compiler
• CXXFLAGS: Extra flags to give to the C++ compiler
• CPPFLAGS: Extra flags to give to the C preprocessor
• LDFLAGS: Extra flags to give to compilers when they are supposed to invoke the linker

Let’s see how we can now build a C program without ever explicitly telling Make how to do the compilation:

CC = gcc # Flag for implicit rules
CFLAGS = -g # Flag for implicit rules. Turn on debug info

# Implicit rule #1: blah is built via the C linker implicit rule
# Implicit rule #2: blah.o is built via the C compilation implicit rule, because blah.c exists
blah: blah.o

blah.c:
    echo "int main() { return 0; }" > blah.c

clean:
    rm -f blah*

Static Pattern Rules

Static pattern rules are another way to write less in a Makefile, but I’d say are more useful and a bit less “magic”. Here’s their syntax:

targets ...: target-pattern: prereq-patterns ...
   commands

The essence is that the given target is matched by the target-pattern (via a % wildcard). Whatever was matched is called the stem. The stem is then substituted into the prereq-pattern, to generate the target’s prereqs.

A typical use case is to compile .c files into .o files. Here’s the manual way:

objects = foo.o bar.o all.o
all: $(objects)

# These files compile via implicit rules
foo.o: foo.c
bar.o: bar.c
all.o: all.c

all.c:
    echo "int main() { return 0; }" > all.c

%.c:
    touch $@

clean:
    rm -f *.c *.o all

Here’s the more efficient way, using a static pattern rule:

objects = foo.o bar.o all.o
all: $(objects)

# These files compile via implicit rules
# Syntax - targets ...: target-pattern: prereq-patterns ...
# In the case of the first target, foo.o, the target-pattern matches foo.o and sets the "stem" to be "foo".
# It then replaces the '%' in prereq-patterns with that stem
$(objects): %.o: %.c

all.c:
    echo "int main() { return 0; }" > all.c

%.c:
    touch $@

clean:
    rm -f *.c *.o all

Static Pattern Rules and Filter

While I introduce functions, later on, I’ll foreshadow what you can do with them. The filter function can be used in Static pattern rules to match the correct files. In this example, I made up the .raw and .result extensions.

obj_files = foo.result bar.o lose.o
src_files = foo.raw bar.c lose.c

.PHONY: all
all: $(obj_files)

$(filter %.o,$(obj_files)): %.o: %.c
    echo "target: $@ prereq: $<"
$(filter %.result,$(obj_files)): %.result: %.raw
    echo "target: $@ prereq: $<" 

%.c %.raw:
    touch $@

clean:
    rm -f $(src_files)

Pattern Rules

Pattern rules are often used but are quite confusing. You can look at them in two ways:

• A way to define your own implicit rules
• A simpler form of static pattern rules

Let’s start with an example first:

# Define a pattern rule that compiles every .c file into a .o file
%.o : %.c
        $(CC) -c $(CFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS) $< -o $@

Pattern rules contain a ‘%’ in the target. This ‘%’ matches any non-empty string, and the other characters match themselves. ‘%’ in a prerequisite of a pattern rule stands for the same stem that was matched by the ‘%’ in the target.

Here’s another example:

# Define a pattern rule that has no pattern in the prerequisites.
# This just creates empty .c files when needed.
%.c:
   touch $@

Double-Colon Rules

Double-Colon Rules are rarely used, but allow multiple rules to be defined for the same target. If these were single colons, a warning would be printed and only the second set of commands would run.

all: blah

blah::
    echo "hello"

blah::
    echo "hello again"

Commands and execution

Command Echoing/Silencing

Add an @ before a command to stop it from being printed
You can also run make with -s to add an @ before each line

all: 
    @echo "This make line will not be printed"
    echo "But this will"

Command Execution

Each command is run in a new shell (or at least the effect is as such)

all: 
    cd ..
    # The cd above does not affect this line, because each command is effectively run in a new shell
    echo `pwd`

    # This cd command affects the next because they are on the same line
    cd ..;echo `pwd`

    # Same as above
    cd ..; \
    echo `pwd`

Default Shell

The default shell is /bin/sh. You can change this by changing the variable SHELL:

SHELL=/bin/bash

cool:
    echo "Hello from bash"

Error handling with -k, -i, and -

Add -k when running make to continue running even in the face of errors. Helpful if you want to see all the errors of Make at once.
Add a - before a command to suppress the error
Add -i to make to have this happen for every command.

one:
    # This error will be printed but ignored, and make will continue to run
    -false
    touch one

Interrupting or killing make

Note only: If you ctrl+c make, it will delete the newer targets it just made.

Recursive use of make

To recursively call a makefile, use the special $(MAKE) instead of make because it will pass the make flags for you and won’t itself be affected by them.

new_contents = "hello:\n\ttouch inside_file"
all:
    mkdir -p subdir
    printf $(new_contents) | sed -e 's/^ //' > subdir/makefile
    cd subdir && $(MAKE)

clean:
    rm -rf subdir

Use export for recursive make

The export directive takes a variable and makes it accessible to sub-make commands. In this example, cooly is exported such that the makefile in subdir can use it.

Note: export has the same syntax as sh, but they aren’t related (although similar in function)

new_contents = "hello:\n\\techo \$$(cooly)"

all:
    mkdir -p subdir
    echo $(new_contents) | sed -e 's/^ //' > subdir/makefile
    @echo "---MAKEFILE CONTENTS---"
    @cd subdir && cat makefile
    @echo "---END MAKEFILE CONTENTS---"
    cd subdir && $(MAKE)

# Note that variables and exports. They are set/affected globally.
cooly = "The subdirectory can see me!"
export cooly
# This would nullify the line above: unexport cooly

clean:
    rm -rf subdir

You need to export variables to have them run in the shell as well.

one=this will only work locally
export two=we can run subcommands with this

all: 
    @echo $(one)
    @echo $$one
    @echo $(two)
    @echo $$two

.EXPORT_ALL_VARIABLES exports all variables for you.

.EXPORT_ALL_VARIABLES:
new_contents = "hello:\n\techo \$$(cooly)"

cooly = "The subdirectory can see me!"
# This would nullify the line above: unexport cooly

all:
    mkdir -p subdir
    echo $(new_contents) | sed -e 's/^ //' > subdir/makefile
    @echo "---MAKEFILE CONTENTS---"
    @cd subdir && cat makefile
    @echo "---END MAKEFILE CONTENTS---"
    cd subdir && $(MAKE)

clean:
    rm -rf subdir

Arguments to make

There’s a nice list of options that can be run from make. Check out --dry-run, --touch, --old-file.

You can have multiple targets to make, i.e. make clean run test runs the clean goal, then run, and then test.

Variables Pt. 2

Flavors and modification

There are two flavors of variables:

• recursive (use =) – only looks for the variables when the command is used, not when it’s defined.
• simply expanded (use :=) – like normal imperative programming — only those defined so far get expanded

# Recursive variable. This will print "later" below
one = one ${later_variable}
# Simply expanded variable. This will not print "later" below
two := two ${later_variable}

later_variable = later

all: 
    echo $(one)
    echo $(two)

Simply expanded (using :=) allows you to append to a variable. Recursive definitions will give an infinite loop error.

one = hello
# one gets defined as a simply expanded variable (:=) and thus can handle appending
one := ${one} there

all: 
    echo $(one)

?= only sets variables if they have not yet been set

one = hello
one ?= will not be set
two ?= will be set

all: 
    echo $(one)
    echo $(two)

Spaces at the end of a line are not stripped, but those at the start are. To make a variable with a single space, use $(nullstring)

with_spaces = hello   # with_spaces has many spaces after "hello"
after = $(with_spaces)there

nullstring =
space = $(nullstring) # Make a variable with a single space.

all: 
    echo "$(after)"
    echo start"$(space)"end

An undefined variable is actually an empty string!

all: 
    # Undefined variables are just empty strings!
    echo $(nowhere)

Use += to append

foo := start
foo += more

all: 
    echo $(foo)

String Substitution is also a really common and useful way to modify variables. Also, check out Text Functions and Filename Functions.

Command-line arguments and override

You can override variables that come from the command line by using override. Here we ran make with make option_one=hi

# Overrides command line arguments
override option_one = did_override
# Does not override command line arguments
option_two = not_override
all: 
    echo $(option_one)
    echo $(option_two)

List of commands and define

“define” is actually just a list of commands. It has nothing to do with being a function. Note here that it’s a bit different than having a semi-colon between commands because each is run in a separate shell, as expected.

one = export blah="I was set!"; echo $$blah

define two
export blah=set
echo $$blah
endef

# One and two are different.

all: 
    @echo "This prints 'I was set'"
    @$(one)
    @echo "This does not print 'I was set' because each command runs in a separate shell"
    @$(two)

Target-specific variables

Variables can be assigned for specific targets

all: one = cool

all: 
    echo one is defined: $(one)

other:
    echo one is nothing: $(one)

Pattern-specific variables

You can assign variables for specific target patterns

%.c: one = cool

blah.c: 
    echo one is defined: $(one)

other:
    echo one is nothing: $(one)

The conditional part of Makefiles

Conditional if/else

foo = ok

all:
ifeq ($(foo), ok)
    echo "foo equals ok"
else
    echo "nope"
endif

Check if a variable is empty

nullstring =
foo = $(nullstring) # end of line; there is a space here

all:
ifeq ($(strip $(foo)),)
    echo "foo is empty after being stripped"
endif
ifeq ($(nullstring),)
    echo "nullstring doesn't even have spaces"
endif

Check if a variable is defined

ifdef does not expand variable references; it just sees if something is defined at all

bar =
foo = $(bar)

all:
ifdef foo
    echo "foo is defined"
endif
ifdef bar
    echo "but bar is not"
endif

$(makeflags)

This example shows you how to test make flags with findstring and MAKEFLAGS. Run this example with make -i to see it print out the echo statement.

bar =
foo = $(bar)

all:
# Search for the "-i" flag. MAKEFLAGS is just a list of single characters, one per flag. So look for "i" in this case.
ifneq (,$(findstring i, $(MAKEFLAGS)))
    echo "i was passed to MAKEFLAGS"
endif

Functions

First Functions

Functions are mainly just for text processing. Call functions with $(fn, arguments) or ${fn, arguments}. You can make your own using the call built-in function. Make has a decent amount of builtin functions.

bar := ${subst not, totally, "I am not superman"}
all: 
    @echo $(bar)

If you want to replace spaces or commas, use variables

comma := ,
empty:=
space := $(empty) $(empty)
foo := a b c
bar := $(subst $(space),$(comma),$(foo))

all: 
    @echo $(bar)

Do NOT include spaces in the arguments after the first. That will be seen as part of the string.

comma := ,
empty:=
space := $(empty) $(empty)
foo := a b c
bar := $(subst $(space), $(comma) , $(foo))

all: 
    # Output is ", a , b , c". Notice the spaces introduced
    @echo $(bar)

String Substitution

$(patsubst pattern,replacement,text) does the following:

“Finds whitespace-separated words in the text that match pattern and replaces them with replacement. Here pattern may contain a ‘%’ which acts as a wildcard, matching any number of any characters within a word. If replacement also contains a ‘%’, the ‘%’ is replaced by the text that matched the ‘%’ in the pattern. Only the first ‘%’ in the pattern and replacement is treated this way; any subsequent ‘%’ is unchanged.” (GNU docs)

The substitution reference $(text:pattern=replacement) is a shorthand for this.

There’s another shorthand that replaces only suffixes: $(text:suffix=replacement). No % wildcard is used here.

Note: don’t add extra spaces for this shorthand. It will be seen as a search or replacement term.

foo := a.o b.o l.a c.o
one := $(patsubst %.o,%.c,$(foo))
# This is a shorthand for the above
two := $(foo:%.o=%.c)
# This is the suffix-only shorthand, and is also equivalent to the above.
three := $(foo:.o=.c)

all:
    echo $(one)
    echo $(two)
    echo $(three)

The foreach function

The foreach function looks like this: $(foreach var,list,text). It converts one list of words (separated by spaces) to another. var is set to each word in the list, and text is expanded for each word.
This appends an exclamation after each word:

foo := who are you
# For each "word" in foo, output that same word with an exclamation after
bar := $(foreach wrd,$(foo),$(wrd)!)

all:
    # Output is "who! are! you!"
    @echo $(bar)

The if function

if checks if the first argument is nonempty. If so runs the second argument, otherwise runs the third.

foo := $(if this-is-not-empty,then!,else!)
empty :=
bar := $(if $(empty),then!,else!)

all:
    @echo $(foo)
    @echo $(bar)

The call function

Make supports creating basic functions. You “define” the function just by creating a variable, but use the parameters $(0), $(1), etc. You then call the function with the special call function. The syntax is $(call variable,param,param). $(0) is the variable, while $(1), $(2), etc. are the parameters.

sweet_new_fn = Variable Name: $(0) First: $(1) Second: $(2) Empty Variable: $(3)

all:
    # Outputs "Variable Name: sweet_new_fn First: go Second: tigers Empty Variable:"
    @echo $(call sweet_new_fn, go, tigers)

The shell function

shell – This calls the shell, but it replaces newlines with spaces!

all: 
    @echo $(shell ls -la) # Very ugly because the newlines are gone!

Other Features

Include Makefiles

The include directive tells make to read one or more other makefiles. It’s a line in the makefile that looks like this:

include filenames...

This is particularly useful when you use compiler flags like -M that create Makefiles based on the source. For example, if some c files include a header, that header will be added to a Makefile that’s written by gcc. I talk about this more in the Makefile Cookbook

The vpath Directive

Use vpath to specify where some set of prerequisites exists. The format is vpath <pattern> <directories, space/colon separated>
<pattern> can have a %, which matches any zero or more characters.
You can also do this globallyish with the variable VPATH

vpath %.h ../headers ../other-directory

some_binary: ../headers blah.h
    touch some_binary

../headers:
    mkdir ../headers

blah.h:
    touch ../headers/blah.h

clean:
    rm -rf ../headers
    rm -f some_binary

Multiline

The backslash (“\”) character gives us the ability to use multiple lines when the commands are too long

some_file: 
    echo This line is too long, so \
        it is broken up into multiple lines

.phony

Adding .PHONY to a target will prevent make from confusing the phony target with a file name. In this example, if the file clean is created, make clean will still be run. .PHONY is great to use, but I’ll skip it in the rest of the examples for simplicity.

some_file:
    touch some_file
    touch clean

.PHONY: clean
clean:
    rm -f some_file
    rm -f clean

.delete_on_error

The make tool will stop running a rule (and will propagate back to prerequisites) if a command returns a nonzero exit status.
DELETE_ON_ERROR will delete the target of a rule if the rule fails in this manner. This will happen for all targets, not just the one it is before like PHONY. It’s a good idea to always use this, even though make does not for historical reasons.

.DELETE_ON_ERROR:
all: one two

one:
    touch one
    false

two:
    touch two
    false

Makefile Cookbook

Let’s go through a really juicy Make example that works well for medium-sized projects.

The neat thing about this makefile is it automatically determines dependencies for you. All you have to do is put your C/C++ files in the src/ folder.

For more on makefiles, refer to the GNU Make manual, which offers a complete reference and examples.

# Thanks to Job Vranish (https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/08/26/makefile-c-projects/)
TARGET_EXEC := final_program

BUILD_DIR := ./build
SRC_DIRS := ./src

# Find all the C and C++ files we want to compile
# Note the single quotes around the * expressions. Make will incorrectly expand these otherwise.
SRCS := $(shell find $(SRC_DIRS) -name '*.cpp' -or -name '*.c' -or -name '*.s')

# String substitution for every C/C++ file.
# As an example, hello.cpp turns into ./build/hello.cpp.o
OBJS := $(SRCS:%=$(BUILD_DIR)/%.o)

# String substitution (suffix version without %).
# As an example, ./build/hello.cpp.o turns into ./build/hello.cpp.d
DEPS := $(OBJS:.o=.d)

# Every folder in ./src will need to be passed to GCC so that it can find header files
INC_DIRS := $(shell find $(SRC_DIRS) -type d)
# Add a prefix to INC_DIRS. So moduleA would become -ImoduleA. GCC understands this -I flag
INC_FLAGS := $(addprefix -I,$(INC_DIRS))

# The -MMD and -MP flags together generate Makefiles for us!
# These files will have .d instead of .o as the output.
CPPFLAGS := $(INC_FLAGS) -MMD -MP

# The final build step.
$(BUILD_DIR)/$(TARGET_EXEC): $(OBJS)
    $(CC) $(OBJS) -o $@ $(LDFLAGS)

# Build step for C source
$(BUILD_DIR)/%.c.o: %.c
    mkdir -p $(dir $@)
    $(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

# Build step for C++ source
$(BUILD_DIR)/%.cpp.o: %.cpp
    mkdir -p $(dir $@)
    $(CXX) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CXXFLAGS) -c $< -o $@


.PHONY: clean
clean:
    rm -r $(BUILD_DIR)

# Include the .d makefiles. The - at the front suppresses the errors of missing
# Makefiles. Initially, all the .d files will be missing, and we don't want those
# errors to show up.
-include $(DEPS)

You can also read  Introduction to GNU Autotools to learn how to automate the generation of a makefile for your coding project.

Source:

https://opensource.com/article/18/8/what-how-makefile

https://makefiletutorial.com/