Makefiles up to 10x Shorter

make v. nmake, a quick example

Conventional Makefile:

TABS = -DTABS=8
USG = -DUSG=1
CFLAGS = -c ${TABS} ${USG}
SOURCE = main.c process.c hash.c
OBJECT = main.o process.o hash.o
INSTALLDIR = ${HOME}/bin

program : ${OBJECT}
	${CC} ${OBJECT} -lm -o program

install :
	- mv ${INSTALLDIR}/program ${INSTALLDIR}/program.old
	cp program ${INSTALLDIR}

main.o : main.c main.h

process.o : process.c process.h main.h hash.h

hash.o : hash.c hash.h

lint :
	lint ${CFLAGS} ${SOURCE}

clean :
	- rm -f core ${OBJECT}

clobber : clean
	- rm -f program

clobber.install:
	- rm ${INSTALLDIR}/program

nmake Makefile:

TABS == 8
USG == 1
program :: main.c process.c hash.c -lm

Despite small size, this nmake version does much more:

• Full viewpathing support
• Automatically maintained header dependencies
• Dynamic state variable dependencies minimize rebuilds
• Dependencies on rule action, compiler, and library
• Remembered state time to trigger updates
• Portable across platforms
• Support for additional common actions such as cc-
• Automatic common actions consistent across Makefiles
• Concurrent and distributed builds