Can I compile all .cpp files in src/ to .o's in obj/, then link to binary in ./?

Austin Hyde picture Austin Hyde · May 25, 2010 · Viewed 128.1k times · Source

My project directory looks like this:

/project
    Makefile
    main
    /src
        main.cpp
        foo.cpp
        foo.h
        bar.cpp
        bar.h
    /obj
        main.o
        foo.o
        bar.o

What I would like my makefile to do would be to compile all .cpp files in the /src folder to .o files in the /obj folder, then link all the .o files in /obj into the output binary in the top-level folder /project.

I have next to no experience with Makefiles, and am not really sure what to search for to accomplish this.

Also, is this a "good" way to do this, or is there a more standard approach to what I'm trying to do?

Answer

bobah picture bobah · May 25, 2010

Makefile part of the question

This is pretty easy, unless you don't need to generalize try something like the code below (but replace space indentation with tabs near g++)

SRC_DIR := .../src
OBJ_DIR := .../obj
SRC_FILES := $(wildcard $(SRC_DIR)/*.cpp)
OBJ_FILES := $(patsubst $(SRC_DIR)/%.cpp,$(OBJ_DIR)/%.o,$(SRC_FILES))
LDFLAGS := ...
CPPFLAGS := ...
CXXFLAGS := ...

main.exe: $(OBJ_FILES)
   g++ $(LDFLAGS) -o $@ $^

$(OBJ_DIR)/%.o: $(SRC_DIR)/%.cpp
   g++ $(CPPFLAGS) $(CXXFLAGS) -c -o $@ $<

Automatic dependency graph generation

A "must" feature for most make systems. With GCC in can be done in a single pass as a side effect of the compilation by adding -MMD flag to CXXFLAGS and -include $(OBJ_FILES:.o=.d) to the end of the makefile body:

CXXFLAGS += -MMD
-include $(OBJ_FILES:.o=.d)

And as guys mentioned already, always have GNU Make Manual around, it is very helpful.