Home/ Questions/Q 7781367
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-01T19:12:24+00:00

I am stuck in writing a Makefile when my source code files are across

  • 0

I am stuck in writing a Makefile when my source code files are across different directories.

The directory structure is as follows :

I have my source files (.cc) in the folders FOLDER1 and FOLDER2 and the header files are in folder named INCLUDE. My makefile is present in FOLDER1.

       program_NAME := myprogram
       program_C_SRCS := $(wildcard *.cc)
       program_C_OBJS := ${program_C_SRCS:.cc=.o}
       program_OBJS := $(program_C_OBJS) 
       program_INCLUDE_DIRS := ../INCLUDE
       program_LIBRARY_DIRS := 
       program_LIBRARIES :=
       CPPFLAGS += $(foreach includedir,$(program_INCLUDE_DIRS),-I$(includedir))
       LDFLAGS += $(foreach librarydir,$(program_LIBRARY_DIRS),-L$(librarydir))
       LDFLAGS += $(foreach library,$(program_LIBRARIES),-l$(library))

       .PHONY: all clean distclean

       all: $(program_NAME)

       $(program_NAME): $(program_OBJS)
       $(LINK.cc) $(program_OBJS) -o $(program_NAME)

       clean:
           @- $(RM) $(program_NAME)
           @- $(RM) $(program_OBJS)

       distclean: clean

Here if I keep all my source (.cc) files in FOLDER1 then it works but on moving some files to FOLDER2 it gives errors of undefined reference.

Please help me understand how to modify my makefile so that I can keep all my header files in one directory say INCLUDE and distribute my source files across different directories.

Thanks !!!

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The problem is, that 

    program_C_SRCS := $(wildcard *.cc)

    only adds source files in the same directory. So when linking you don’t have the object files of your second folder. You probably can solve the problem by simply adding the source files of the other folder to your program_C_SRCS:

    program_C_SRCS += $(wildcard ../FOLDER2/*.cc)

    Include directorys

    I guess you are using the gcc/g++, in this case http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/cpp/Search-Path.html says, that header paths are searched from left to right, meaning the first path given is searched first. Therefore you only have to add -I INCLUDE2 before -I INCLUDE1 option to achive what you want.
    Your starting makefile already has some transformation for more then one include path build in:

       CPPFLAGS += $(foreach includedir,$(program_INCLUDE_DIRS),-I$(includedir))

    So you only have to rewrite your include paths:

    program_INCLUDE_DIRS := ../INCLUDE2
program_INCLUDE_DIRS += ../INCLUDE1
    • 0