Thread: makefile question

Hello,
I am working on an assignment for class and one of the specifications is that "the program must be divided into the five files main.c, flight.c, flight.h, passenger.c, passenger.h, as well as a makefile to create this program." I have already written the different functions needed to execute the program, I am just having a really hard time understanding how to go about creating this makefile. I have talked to the professor and other students, but its just not clicking. Could you help explain how this is supposed to work?
Thank you so much,
John

Did you Google "makefile" as there are lots of online tutorials for creating a makefile from scratch.

i did, but i guess what i'm having trouble understanding is where the ' .o ' files are coming from. I was told we need to include a main.o, flight.o, and passenger.o when creating the make file, but I'm unsure of where they are coming from.

The ".o" files are object modules and are generated by modifying the behavior of the compiler with the "-c" switch.
Lookup the man page of the C compiler on your machine and scroll down to the "-c" option - RTM.
However, there's no need to specify how to create the ".o" files because make is smart enough to figure it out for you.

For example the command to create a load module from three source modules would be:

Code:

prog:  file1.o file2.o file3.o
       cc file1.o file2.o file3.o -o prog

Originally Posted by brewbuck

Of course, such a simple makefile doesn't represent dependencies properly, but for the purposes of the assignment it's probably enough.

Just my 2c for what it's worth altho' a complex makefile example would have caused more confusion for the o/p, methinks.