Introduction

The UNIX make utility facilitates the creation and maintenance of executable programs from source code. make keeps track of the commands needed to build the code and when changes are made to a source file, recompiles only the necessary files. make creates and updates programs with a minimum of effort.

A small initial investment of time is needed to set up make for a given software project, but afterward, recompiling and linking is done consistently and quickly by typing one command: make, instead of issuing many complicated command lines that invoke the compiler and linker.

This tutorial will introduce the simple usage of the make utility with the goal of building an executable program from a series of source code files. Most of the varied, subtle, and complex features of make are the subject of entire books and are not covered here. See the NERSC UNIX Resources page for more information.

This tutorial assumes that you have some familiarity with UNIX, text editors and compiling programs from source code.