Re: recusrive make or include make files

[John Graham-Cumming]

sharan basappa wrote:
> Problem : In the process I have gone through both the options of
> doing this using recursive make option or including these submakes
> into main make file. The issue that I forsee in case of including
> submake file is that individuals who create these submakes have to be
> aware from where their make files will be called, whereas in case of
> resursive make, once the make works in their directory it will always
> work if top level make executes these make files. As an example, we 
> create a subdirectory to dump compiled code for which we use "mkdir
> -p ..." Doing this by including make file will create this directory
> from where the top level make file was called not in the
> sub-directory is located.

I'd urge you to go with a non-recursive make since you are starting 
something new.   Sometime ago I wrote an article for Dr Dobbs called 
'Cross-Platform Builds' (http://www.ddj.com/articles/2005/0501/) which 
outlines a complete non-recursive build system.

Once you get it set up I don't think the worry about the submakes will 
be realized.  You just need to tell people to include the special 
top-level Makefile.

John.