Introduction

This is a build solution to build a c++ program along with it's "libraries". It can be used in a project where one is required to develop a library simultaneously with the program. This Makefile automatically detects the source files in the project tree (using the wildcard function), and generates the depandancy list to produce an executable and the libraries for it. The libraries can be statically or dynamically linked. This is one of a set of similar sister projects used to build c and c++ projects.

How To Use

Using this build solution is simple. All you need to do is copy Makefile and Makefile2 into your project directory.

cd /path/to/your/project/

then

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SidhBhat/make-build_Cpp_app/main/Makefile > Makefile
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SidhBhat/make-build_Cpp_app/main/Makefile2 > Makefile2
# be sure to write the raw content to the correct filenames

Now you're going to want to set these variables inside the makefile, to specify where to look for sources and where to build them.

#build configuration
override srcdir     = src/
override buildir    = build/
#program Name
prog_name           = main

You are pretty much set now. However here are the compile time variables you can set in the makefile, or through the commandline:

# Compiler options
CXX        = g++
CXXLIBS    =
CXXFLAGS   = -g -O -Wall
RPATH      =
# Archive options
AR         = ar
ARFLAGS    = crs
# Install location
DESTDIR    =
prefix     = /usr/local/

There is one specail flag, that controls whether the libraries should be dynamically linked or not.

# set this variable to any value to make shared libraries (cleaning existing build files may be necessary)
SHARED =

By calling the target generate-config-files, the makefile will write several *.mk files into the source directory.

make generate-config-files

These files will be included into the make process, and act as configuration files. You can specify the libraries to use and any external libraries if required here. The configuration files can also control whether a specific library will be dynamic linked or not, regardless of the global SHARED flag. There will be one config file for each library, and one for the executable. See The Directory Structure below for more info.

The Directory Structure

The Directory Structure consists of a source directory and a build directory. Ideally you would keep these in your project tree, but technically they can be anywhere. The makefile expects all source files to be directly in srcdir/. Every directory inside srcdir/ that has valid c++ files inside will be taken as a library, the name of the library being the same as directory name. And all build activities are confined to buildir/. The configuration files are written into the directory of each library, and the config for the executable is writted directly into srcdir/

The file names for the configuration files can be modified by the following make variables:

override libconfigfile  = config.mk
override mainconfig     = libconfig.mk

graph
	ProjectDir/-->Makefile
	ProjectDir/-->Makefile2
	ProjectDir/-->srcdir/
	ProjectDir/-->buildir/
	srcdir/-->main_source_files
	srcdir/-->lib_directories/
	lib_directories/-->lib_source_files
	lib_directories/-->lib_config_files
	srcdir/-->main_config_file
	buildir/-->libraries
	buildir/-->build_files
	buildir/-->executable

Sibling Projects

This Makefile is one among a set of make solutions to build c and c++ projects

• make-build_C_app
• make-build_Cpp_app*
• make-build_C_lib
• make-build_Cpp_lib
• simple-make-build

Contributing

If you would like to contribute, you can start by simply creating a pull request :).