Question

Does anyone know of a tool that generates a makefile by scanning a directory for source files?

It may be naive:

• no need to detect external dependencies
• use default compiler/linker settings

Answer 1

You can write a Makefile that does this for you:

SOURCES=$(shell find . -name "*.cpp")
OBJECTS=$(SOURCES:%.cpp=%.o)
TARGET=foo

.PHONY: all
all: $(TARGET)

$(TARGET): $(OBJECTS)
        $(LINK.cpp) $^ $(LOADLIBES) $(LDLIBS) -o $@

.PHONY: clean
clean:
        rm -f $(TARGET) $(OBJECTS)

Just place this in root directory of your source hierarchy and run make (you’ll need GNU Make for this to work).

(Note that I’m not fluent in Makefileish so maybe this can be done easier.)