Use the same makefile for make (Linux) and nmake (Windows)

c makefile nmake
j0ker picture j0ker · Nov 25, 2011 · Viewed 28.6k times · Source

I have a simple C program (one source file) which I want to compile on Linux and on Windows via make and nmake, respectively. Is there a possibility to accomplish this with a single makefile?

I thought about something like

ifeq($(MAKE), nmake)
    // nmake code here
else
    // make code here
endif

Unfortunately nmake seems not to understand ifeq, so I cannot use that. I have a working makefile, but that produces very ugly results:

hello: hello.c
    $(CC) hello.c

That works on both systems. The problem is that the outcome depends on the default behaviors of the respective compilers. Under Linux I get an executeable named 'a.out' rather than 'hello'. Under Windows I get 'hello.exe' but there is also 'hello.obj' which I do not want to have.

Is there an alternative way? Or is what I'm trying absolutely impossible?

Answer

Some programmer dude picture Some programmer dude · Nov 25, 2011

It's probably not impossible, but most likely so hard that it would be easier to write two makefiles anyway.

Both GNU make (used in Linux) and nmake have include directives though, so some common things can be put in a common makefile that is included by the main makefile.

Related questions

makefile:4: *** missing separator. Stop

This is my makefile: all:ll ll:ll.c gcc -c -Wall -Werror -02 c.c ll.c -o ll $@ $< clean : \rm -fr ll When I try to make clean or make make, I get this error: :makefile:4: *** missing …

Read More
How do I make a simple makefile for gcc on Linux?

I have three files: program.c, program.h and headers.h. program.c includes program.h and headers.h. I need to compile this on Linux using gcc compiler. I'm not sure how to do this. Netbeans created one for …

Read More
make: Nothing to be done for `all'

I am going through an eg pgm to create a make file. http://mrbook.org/tutorials/make/ My folder eg_make_creation contains the following files, desktop:~/eg_make_creation$ ls factorial.c functions.h hello hello.c main.c …

Read More