Question

Is it possible to write pattern rule like:

%.o: %.c %.h
    <some action>

so it accepts not one but any number of headers, because I have:

main.o: main.c $(HEADERS)

so it doesen’t fit to standard implicit rule, because of many .h files that main.c depends on, so is it possible to make an implicit rule, that would accept such input, or should I just write

$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(DEFINE_OPT) $(INCLUDE) -c  $<

explicitly?

Answer 1

You can write:

%.o: %.c $(HEADERS)

However, in general, you probably don’t want all source files to be dependent on all header files. You should look into auto-generating the prerequisite lists; the Make manual talks about this a bit: http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Automatic-Prerequisites.