Make (software)
| Original author(s) | Stuart Feldman |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1977 |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Unix (and many others) |
| Type | Build automation tool |
| Website | none |
In software development, Make is a build automation tool that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called Makefiles which specify how to derive the target program. Though integrated development environments and language-specific compiler features can also be used to manage a build process, Make remains widely used, especially in Unix and Unix-like operating systems.
Besides building programs, Make can be used to manage any project where some files must be updated automatically from others whenever the others change.
There are now a number of dependency-tracking build utilities, but Make is one of the most widespread, primarily due to its inclusion in Unix, starting with the PWB/UNIX 1.0, which featured a variety of tools targeting software development tasks. It was originally created by Stuart Feldman in April 1976 at Bell Labs. Feldman received the 2003 ACM Software System Award for the authoring of this widespread tool.
Before Make's introduction, the Unix build system most commonly consisted of operating system dependent "make" and "install" shell scripts accompanying their program's source. Being able to combine the commands for the different targets into a single file and being able to abstract out dependency tracking and archive handling was an important step in the direction of modern build environments.
Make has gone through a number of rewrites, including a number of from-scratch variants which used the same file format and basic algorithmic principles and also provided a number of their own non-standard enhancements. Some of them are:
POSIX includes standardization of the basic features and operation of the Make utility, and is implemented with varying degrees of completeness in Unix-based versions of Make. In general, simple makefiles may be used between various versions of Make with reasonable success. GNU Make, BSD Make and Makepp can be configured to look first for files named "GNUmakefile", "BSDmakefile" and "Makeppfile" respectively, which allows one to put makefiles which use implementation-defined behavior in separate locations.
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