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mfm -- The MakeFile Maker

mfm is a program for automatically generating Makefiles. Its goals are:

  • to create portable Makefiles that will work with all POSIX-compliant versions of make

  • to minimize the effort required by the writer of the Makefile

  • to be easily extensible

mfm consists of a Perl script and a set of reusable rule templates, also written in Perl. For each item to be built, a software author specifies a rule template and its parameters; the mfm program uses this information to build a Makefile. The Makefile is distributed with the source code; an end-user of the package doesn't need to have any special software installed. The system can be extended by writing new rule templates.

mfm works in a top-down way. You specify the targets you want built, and it deduces how to build them either from target-specific rules, rule templates, implicit rules based on the target's extension, or default rules. The bundled rules can handle complex situations like automatic dependency generation for C header files, user build parameters, selecting platform-dependent code, and more.

See the entries in Documentation/ for more details, including an idea of what mfm's input looks like.

mfm is self-hosting. To install it:

  1. Clone the repository.

  2. Run ./bootstrap to build the Makefile.

  3. (Optional) Edit conf-* for any non-standard parameters.

  4. Run make install to install.

Send questions or comments to [email protected].