Question

I am now studying C++. I want a makefile which will compile all of the cpp files in the current directory to separate executables. For example:

In a directory there are 3 c++ files, such as examp1.cpp, examp2.cpp and examp3.cpp. I want a makefile which will compile and link them and give examp1.exe, examp2.exe and examp3.exe

I have created a bash script to compile all of them and create exes but I think; that’s not the exact way to do this.

I have a a Makefile for “.c”, but that does not seem to work here. It is only creating object files and not actually linking it. It is as follows:

SRCS=$(wildcard *.c)
OBJS=(SRCS:.c=.o)
all: $(OBJS)

The above code compiles all the new and modified “.c” files to “.o” files with same name in the current directory.

The bash script I am using to create executables is as follows:

for i in ./*.cpp
do
   g++ -Wno-deprecated $i -o `basename $i .cpp`".exe"
done

This means I want whatever “.cpp” files I put in that directory, by using a simple “make all” or anything like that it should compile.

Answer 1

A minimal Makefile that does what you want would be:

#Tell make to make one .out file for each .cpp file found in the current directory
all: $(patsubst %.cpp, %.out, $(wildcard *.cpp))

#Rule how to create arbitary .out files. 
#First state what is needed for them e.g. additional headers, .cpp files in an include folder...
#Then the command to create the .out file, probably you want to add further options to the g++ call.
%.out: %.cpp Makefile
    g++ $< -o $@ -std=c++0x

You’ll have to replace g++ by the compiler you’re using and possibly adjust some platform specific setting, but the Makefile itself should work.