THANKS!!! Great explanation, very clear! I have the idea now!
Thanks again,
Daniel
>From: Luigi Santillo <gi...@li...>
>To: dev...@so...
>Subject: Re: [Dev-C++] A basic q...
>Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 07:57:04 +0200
>
>Hello Daniel,
>
>A makefile is a set of instructions (a program if you wish) that will be
>interpreted by a program generally known as "make".
>
>"make" is a general tool, not strictly related to programming languages,
>but undoubtedly one is likely to run into it when dealing with "compiled"
>programming languages.
>
>Here is what I mean.
>
>Consider the classic "BASIC" programming language (hope you know a little
>about it), a program written with such language is a set of instructions
>which a BASIC interpreter reads and executes, one at a time, each time you
>run the program. There is no executable file and to run a program you
>always need: the source code and the interpreter. Also, if a program has
>syntax errors, you will find out about them, only when the interpreter
>executes the offending line of code; in fact only at that time it will
>realize that the instruction is wrong.
>
>Consider instead a C (or C++) program (I mean here what is known as a
>statically linked program, that is, one which does not use any DLL). You
>write the source code, a compiler will then translate it into an object
>file which a linker will use to make an executable file. Thus the program
>is translated into machine code only once (and not each time you execute
>the program), also to execute the program, you only need the executable
>file (often called the binary file) and nothing else (this of course is not
>true of dynamically linked programs, which also require the right DLLs).
>Since to run a program, you must have compiled already *all* the
>instructions, if there are syntax errors, you will find out about them, at
>compile time, no instruction will be executed if there are syntax errors.
>
>Now here is the reason why one uses "make" with compiled programming
>languages:
>say that one writes some source code and then compiles it, making the
>corresponding executable file, now suppose that he makes some changes to
>the source code, what happens is that the executable file no longer
>corresponds to the source. This never happens with interpreted languages,
>because, as I said, there is no executable file for those languages.
>
>The classic way (don't know how many still use it) to keep a binary up to
>date is to use "make". Roughly, What "make" does is the following:
>- read the time stamp of the binary file
>- read the time of the corresponding source file
>- if the source happens to be "younger" that the binary, this latter is
>out-of-date
>
>When the binary is out of date, the actions needed to update it will be
>performed, by "make".
>
>Things are a bit more complicated when a program is made of code spread
>across different source files, but the basic idea is the same.
>
>At this point you could ask:
>- How does "make" know which source file is the one used to compile some
>binary file?
>- How does it know which are the actions to update a binary file?
>
>Well, you put these informations in a text file, named "makefile",
>arranging them in some special way (just the syntax understood by "make").
>
>The above is, I hope, the frame of the picture: if you wish to fill it with
>details, you could start by reading the manual of the GNU "make" (I've
>found it on the Dev-C++ resource site).
>
>At 14:13 09/04/02 +0100, Daniel Glenfield wrote:
>>I have gaps in my knowledge lol.
>>What's a MAKE file, and what does it do?
>
>
>
>
>--
>Luigi
>gi...@li...
>
>
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