Makefile or IDE?

[pozz]

When I download C source code (for example for Linux), most of the time
I need to use make (or autoconf).

In embedded world (no Linux embedded), we use MCUs produced by a silicon
vendor that give you at least a ready-to-use IDE (Elipse based or Visual
Studio based or proprietary). Recently it give you a full set of
libraries, middlewares, tools to create a complex project from scratch
in a couple of minutes that is compatibile and buildable with its IDE.

Ok, it's a good thing to start with a minimal effort and make some tests
on EVB and new chips. However I'm wondering if a good quality
commercial/industrial grade software is maintained under the IDE of the
silicon vendor or it is maintained with a Makefile (or similar).

I'm asking this, because I just started to add some unit tests (to run
on the host machine) on one of my projects that is built under the IDE.
Without a Makefile is very difficult to add a series of tests: do I
create a different IDE project for each module test?

Moreover, the build process of a project maintained under an IDE is
manual (click on a button). Most of the time there isn't the possibility
to build by a command line and when it is possible, it isn't the
"normal" way.

Many times in the past I tried to write a Makefile for my projects, but
sincerely for me make tool is very criptic (tabs instead of spaces?).
Dependencies are a mess.

Do you use IDE or Makefile? Is there a recent and much better
alternative to make (such as cmake or SCons)?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2021-12-02, pozz <pozz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, it's a good thing to start with a minimal effort and make some tests
> on EVB and new chips. However I'm wondering if a good quality
> commercial/industrial grade software is maintained under the IDE of the
> silicon vendor or it is maintained with a Makefile (or similar).

We always use makefiles. Some people do their editing and "make"ing in
an IDE like eclipse. Others use emacs or whatever other environment
they like.

In my experience, software provided by silicon vendors has always,
been utter crap. That's been true for IDEs, libraries, header files,
debuggers -- _everything_. And it's been true for 40 years.

Recently I tried to use the Silicon vendor's IDE and demo
project/libraries to build the simple app that prints "hello world" on
a serial port. This is an application, IDE, and libraries the silicon
vendor provided _with_the_evaluation_board_.

Following the instructions, step-by-step, did allow me to build an
executable. It was far too large for the MCU's flash. I threw out the
silicon vendor's "drivers" (which were absurdly bloated) and C library
(also huge). I wrote my own bare-metal drivers and substituted the
printf() implementation I had been using for years. The exectuable
size was reduced by over 75%.

We've also tried to use non-silicon-vendor IDEs (eclipse), and using
the IDE's concept of "projects" is always a complete mess. The
"project" always ends up with lot's of hard-coded paths and
host-specific junk in it. This means you can't check the project into
git/subversion, check it out on another machine, and build it without
days of "fixing" the project to work on the new host.

--
Grant

[pozz]

Thank you for sharing your experiences. Anyway my post wasn't related to
the quality (size/speed efficiency...) of source code provided by
silicon vendors, but to the build process: IDE vs Makefile.

[Don Y]

Makefiles give you more control over the build/test/document process.
They're "code" of a different sort (and purpose).

Otherwise, you are left at the mercy of whoever designed/implemented
the tool(chain) you are using.

[I have makefiles that ship my sources off to other machines and
start builds, there, to verify that my code at least compiles
without warnings on different architectures -- before getting
to "invested" in the current state of the code]

There are tools that will help you create makefiles.
The biggest problem (with inheritted codebases) will be if you
have to use a particular "flavor" of make. Or, some oddball
build *system*. (converting from something like that to
a more "standardized" build environment can often be a
significant effort. So, if the foreign codebase is something
that is still actively being maintained, you may choose to adopt
its oddball way of doing things to save yourself from having to
keep "porting" the build mechanism(s) over to "your" way of
doing things -- even if that is a friendlier environment!

[Stefan Reuther]

Am 02.12.2021 um 12:46 schrieb pozz:
> Moreover, the build process of a project maintained under an IDE is
> manual (click on a button). Most of the time there isn't the possibility
> to build by a command line and when it is possible, it isn't the
> "normal" way.

So far, all the IDEs I have encountered this century use some variation
of make under the hood, and have a somewhat standard compiler (i.e.
responds to `whatevercc -c file.c -o file.o`).

> Many times in the past I tried to write a Makefile for my projects, but
> sincerely for me make tool is very criptic (tabs instead of spaces?).
> Dependencies are a mess.
>
> Do you use IDE or Makefile? Is there a recent and much better
> alternative to make (such as cmake or SCons)?

Think of make (or ninja) as some sort of (macro-) assembler language of
build systems, and add a high-level language on top.

CMake seems to be a popular (the most popular?) choice for that language
on top, although reasons why it sucks are abundant; the most prominent
for me being that the Makefiles it generates violate pretty much every
best practice and therefore are slow. Other than that, it can build
embedded software of course.

You'll eventually need another meta-build system on top to build the
projects that form your system image (busybox? openssl? dropbear?
linux?), you'll not port their build systems into yours.


Stefan

[pozz]

It's very difficult to choose the build system today to study and use.

make, Cmake/make, Cmake/ninja, Meson, Scons, ...

What do you suggest for embedded projects? Of course I use
cross-compiler for the target (mainly arm-gcc), but also host native
compiler (mingw on Windows and gcc on Linux) for testing and simulation.

[Tauno Voipio]

They are not complete opposites For example, the Eclipse CDT uses make
at the tool to perform the build. There is a difference whether the
user wirites the makefiles or the IDE creates them. Most IDEs create
makefiles for running the generated code on the same computer which
houses the IDE, and it is more difficult to cross-compile for embedded
targets.

I agree on the silicon manufacturers' code, it should be jettisoned.

I have abandoned the code from both Atmel and ST after fighting some
weeks to make them perform. Instead, the manufacturers should
concentrate on documenting the hardware properly. I had to dis-assemble
Atmel's start-up code to get the fact that SAM4 processor clock controls
must be changed only one field at a time, even if the fields occupy
the same register. If multiple fields were changed, the clock set-up
did never get ready. This is a serious problem, as ARM breaks the JTAG
standard and requires the processor clock running to respond to JTAG.
The JTAG standard assumes that the only clocking needed comes from the
JTAG clock.

--

-TV

[Stefan Reuther]

Same here.

At work, we use cmake/make for building (but if you have cmake, it
doesn't matter whether there's make or ninja below it). That's pretty
ok'ish for turning a bunch of source code files into an executable;
probably not so good for doing something else (e.g. rendering images for
documentation and your device's UI).

Personally, I generate my Makefiles (or build.ninja files) with a
homegrown script; again, based on the assumption that make is an
assembler that needs a high-level language on top.

However, building your code isn't the whole story. Unless you have a
huge monorepo containing everything you ever did, you'll have to check
out different things, and you will have dependencies between projects,
some even conditional (maybe you don't want to build your unit test
infrastructure when you make a release build for your target? maybe you
want a different kernel version when building an image for a v2 board
vs. a v1 board?).

I use a tool called 'bob' <https://github.com/BobBuildTool/bob> as the
meta-build system for that, at work and personally. It started out as an
in-house tool so it surely isn't industry standard, needs some planning,
and then gets the job done nicely. It invokes the original build process
of the original subprojects, be it cmake-based or autotools-based. The
people who build (desktop or embedded) Linux distributions all have some
meta-build system to do things like that, and I would assume neither of
them is easy to set up, just because the problem domain is pretty complex.


Stefan

[Theo]

pozz <pozz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you use IDE or Makefile? Is there a recent and much better
> alternative to make (such as cmake or SCons)?

ISTM that IDEs start off as cover for the woeful state of the command line
environment on Windows.

On Unix, when you want to target a different platform, all you need is a new
compiler. Just grab arm-unknown-gnueabi-gcc and you're done. Maybe you
need some libraries as well, but that's easy. Debugging tools are all there
- based on gdb or one of numerous frontends. Then you use the environment
you already have - your own editor, shell, scripting language, version
control, etc are all there.

On Windows[*], few people develop like that because cmd.exe is an awful
shell to work in, all this C:\Program Files\blah tends to get in the way of
Unixy build tools like make, and command line editors etc aren't very good.
Windows also makes it awkward to mix and match GUI tools (eg separate
editor, compiler, debugger GUI apps).

So instead people expect an IDE with its own editor, that does everything in
house and lives in a single maximised window, and orchestrates the build
pipeline.

But then it starts bloating - the debugger gets brought in, then the
programmer, then sometimes it starts growing its own idea of a version
control client. And eventually you end up with something extremely
complicated and somewhat flaky just to build a few kilobytes of code.

Not to say that there aren't some useful features of IDEs - one thing is
explicit library integration into the editor (so you get documentation and
expansion as you type), another is special dialogues for configuration
options in your particular chip (eg pin mapping or initial clock setup)
rather than expecting you to configure all these things from code. The
first is something that existing editors can do given sufficient
information of the API, and the second is generally something you only do
once per project.

But for the basic edit-build-run-test cycle, the GUI seems mostly to get in
the way.

Theo

[*] Powershell and WSL have been trying to improve this. But I've not seen
any build flows that make much use of them, beyond simply taking Linux flows
and running them in WSL.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2021-12-03, Theo <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

> [*] Powershell and WSL have been trying to improve this. But I've not seen
> any build flows that make much use of them, beyond simply taking Linux flows
> and running them in WSL.

I always had good luck using Cygwin and gnu "make" on Windows to run
various Win32 .exe command line compilers (e.g. IAR). I (thankfully)
haven't needed to do that for several years now...

--
Grant

[pozz]

It's absurd how difficult is to create a Makefile for a simple project
with the following tree:

Makefile
src/
file1.c
module1/
file2.c
module2/
file3.c
target1/
Release/
src/
file1.o
file1.d
module1/
file2.o
file2.d
module2/
file3.o
file3.d
Debug/
src/
file1.o
file1.d
...

Just to create directories for output files (objects and dependencies)
is a mess: precious rule, cheating make adding a dot after trailing
slash, second expansion, order-only prerequisite!!!

Dependencies must be created as a side effect of compilation with
esoteric -M options for gcc.

Is cmake simpler to configure?

[Stefan Reuther]

Am 03.12.2021 um 23:48 schrieb pozz:
> It's absurd how difficult is to create a Makefile for a simple project
> with the following tree:
>
> Makefile
> src/
>   file1.c
>   module1/
>     file2.c
>   module2/
>     file3.c
> target1/
>   Release/

[...]

>   Debug/
>     src/
>       file1.o
>       file1.d
>       ...
>
> Just to create directories for output files (objects and dependencies)
> is a mess: precious rule, cheating make adding a dot after trailing
> slash, second expansion, order-only prerequisite!!!

Hypothesis: a single Makefile that does all this is not a good idea.
Better: make a single Makefile that turns your source code into one
instance of object code, and give it some configuration options that say
whether you want target1/Release, target2/Release, or host/Debug.

I'm not sure what you need order-only dependencies for. For a project
like this, with GNU make I'd most likely just do something like

OBJ = file1.o module1/file2.o module2/file3.o
main: $(OBJ)
$(CC) -o $@ $(OBJ)
$(OBJ): %.o: $(SRCDIR)/%.c
mkdir $(dir $@)
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

> Dependencies must be created as a side effect of compilation with
> esoteric -M options for gcc.

It's not too bad with sufficiently current versions.

CFLAGS += -MMD -MP
-include $(OBJ:.o=.d)

> Is cmake simpler to configure?

CMake does one-configuration-per-invocation type builds like sketched
above, i.e. to build target1/Release and target1/Debug, you invoke CMake
on two different workspaces, once with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release and
once with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug.


Stefan

[pozz]

Oh yes, I'm using three make variables:

CONF=rls|dbg
TARGET=target1|target2

I also have

MODEL=model1|model2

because the same source code can be compiler to produce firmware for two
types of products.

Anyway, even using these three variables, the Makefile is difficult to
write and understand (at least for me).

> I'm not sure what you need order-only dependencies for. For a project
> like this, with GNU make I'd most likely just do something like
>
> OBJ = file1.o module1/file2.o module2/file3.o
> main: $(OBJ)
> $(CC) -o $@ $(OBJ)
> $(OBJ): %.o: $(SRCDIR)/%.c
> mkdir $(dir $@)
> $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

This is suboptimal. Every time one object file is created (because it is
not present or because prerequisites aren't satisfied), mkdir command is
executed, even if $(dir $@) is already created.

A better approach is to use a dedicated rule for directories, but it's
very complex and tricky[1].

I think your approach is better, only because is much more
understandable, not because is more efficient.

>> Dependencies must be created as a side effect of compilation with
>> esoteric -M options for gcc.
>
> It's not too bad with sufficiently current versions.
>
> CFLAGS += -MMD -MP
> -include $(OBJ:.o=.d)

Are you sure you don't need -MT too, to specify exactly the target rule?

>> Is cmake simpler to configure?
>
> CMake does one-configuration-per-invocation type builds like sketched
> above, i.e. to build target1/Release and target1/Debug, you invoke CMake
> on two different workspaces, once with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release and
> once with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug.

Yes, I was asking if the configuration file of CMake is simpler to write
compared to a Makefile.


[1] https://ismail.badawi.io/blog/automatic-directory-creation-in-make/

[David Brown]

On 04/12/2021 16:23, pozz wrote:
> Il 04/12/2021 10:31, Stefan Reuther ha scritto:

>> I'm not sure what you need order-only dependencies for. For a project
>> like this, with GNU make I'd most likely just do something like
>>
>>      OBJ = file1.o module1/file2.o module2/file3.o
>>      main: $(OBJ)
>>           $(CC) -o $@ $(OBJ)
>>      $(OBJ): %.o: $(SRCDIR)/%.c
>>           mkdir $(dir $@)
>>           $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@
>

I almost never use makefiles that have the object files (or source
files, or other files) specified explicitly.

CFILES := $(foreach dir,$(ALLSOURCEDIRS),$(wildcard $(dir)/*.c))
CXXFILES := $(foreach dir,$(ALLSOURCEDIRS),$(wildcard $(dir)/*.cpp))

OBJSsrc := $(CFILES:.c=.o) $(CXXFILES:.cpp=.o)
OBJS := $(addprefix $(OBJDIR), $(patsubst ../%,%,$(OBJSsrc)))

If there is a C or C++ file in the source tree, it is part of the
project. Combined with automatic dependency resolution (for which I use
gcc with -M* flags) this means that the make for a project adapts
automatically whenever you add new source or header files, or change the
ones that are there.

> This is suboptimal. Every time one object file is created (because it is
> not present or because prerequisites aren't satisfied), mkdir command is
> executed, even if $(dir $@) is already created.

Use existence-only dependencies:

target/%.o : %.c | target

$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

target :
mkdir -p target


When you have a dependency given after a |, gnu make will ensure that it
exists but does not care about its timestamp. So here it will check if
the target directory is there before creating target/%.o, and if not it
will make it. It probably doesn't matter much for directories, but it
can be useful in some cases to avoid extra work.

And use "mkdir -p" to make a directory including any other parts of the
path needed, and to avoid an error if the directory already exists.

>
> A better approach is to use a dedicated rule for directories, but it's
> very complex and tricky[1].

The reference you gave is okay too. Some aspects of advanced makefiles
/are/ complex and tricky, and can be hard to debug (look out for mixes
of spaces instead of tabs at the start of lines!) But once you've got
them in place, you can re-use them in other projects. And you can copy
examples like the reference you gave, rather than figuring it out yourself.

>
> I think your approach is better, only because is much more
> understandable, not because is more efficient.
>

My version is - IMHO - understandable /and/ efficient.

>
>>> Dependencies must be created as a side effect of compilation with
>>> esoteric -M options for gcc.
>>
>> It's not too bad with sufficiently current versions.
>>
>>      CFLAGS += -MMD -MP
>>      -include $(OBJ:.o=.d)
>
> Are you sure you don't need -MT too, to specify exactly the target rule?
>

The exact choice of -M flags depends on details of your setup. I prefer
to have the dependency creation done as a separate step from the
compilation - it's not strictly necessary, but I have found it neater.
However, I use two -MT flags per dependency file. One makes a rule for
the file.o dependency, the other is for the file.d dependency. That
way, make knows when it has to re-build the dependency file.

>
>>> Is cmake simpler to configure?
>>
>> CMake does one-configuration-per-invocation type builds like sketched
>> above, i.e. to build target1/Release and target1/Debug, you invoke CMake
>> on two different workspaces, once with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release and
>> once with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug.
>
> Yes, I was asking if the configuration file of CMake is simpler to write
> compared to a Makefile.
>

I've only briefly looked at CMake. It always looked a bit limited to me
- sometimes I have a variety of extra programs or steps to run (like a
Python script to pre-process files and generate extra C or header files,
or extra post-processing steps). I also often need different compiler
flags for different parts of a project. Perhaps it would work for what
I need and I just haven't read enough.

>
> [1] https://ismail.badawi.io/blog/automatic-directory-creation-in-make/

[Tauno Voipio]

CMake is on a different level than make. CMake aims to the realm of
autoconf, automake and friends. One of the supported tail-ends for
CMake is GNU make.

--

-TV

[David Brown]

Yes, I know. The question is, could I (or the OP, or others) use CMake
to control their builds? It doesn't really matter if the output is a
makefile, a ninja file, or whatever - it matters if it can do the job
better (for some value of "better") than a hand-written makefile. I
suspect that for projects that fit into the specific patterns it
supports, it will be a good choice - for others, it will not.

[Tauno Voipio]

I tried to use it for some raw-iron embedded programs. IMHO, CMake
belongs there more to the problem than solution set. CMake is aimed
to produce code for the system it is run on, cross-compilation creates
problems.

I succeeded to use CMake for cross-compiling on PC Linux for Raspi OS
Linux, but the compiler identification for a raw metal target was not
happy when the trial compilation could not link a run file using the
Linux run file creation model.

--

-TV

[George Neuner]

On Thu, 2 Dec 2021 17:34:55 +0100, Stefan Reuther
<stefa...@arcor.de> wrote:

>CMake seems to be a popular (the most popular?) choice for that language
>on top, although reasons why it sucks are abundant; the most prominent
>for me being that the Makefiles it generates violate pretty much every
>best practice and therefore are slow. Other than that, it can build
>embedded software of course.

CMake is popular because it is cross-platformm: with a bit of care,
its makefiles (conditionally) can run on any platform that supports
CMake.

Cross-platform can be a dealbreaker in the desktop/server world.

YMMV,
George

[George Neuner]

The problem with Cygwin is it doesn't play well with native Windows
GCC (MingW et al).

Cygwin compilers produce executables that depend on the /enormous/
Cygwin library. You can statically link the library or ship the DLL
(or an installer that downloads it) with your program, but by doing so
your programs falls under GPL - the terms of which are not acceptable
to some developers.

And the Cygwin environment is ... less than stable. Any update to
Windows can break it.

YMMV,
George

[David Brown]

I concur with that. Cygwin made sense long ago, but for the past couple
of decades the mingw-based alternatives have been more appropriate for
most uses of *nix stuff on Windows. In particular, Cygwin is a thick
compatibility layer that has its own filesystem, process management, and
other features to fill in the gaps where Windows doesn't fulfil the
POSIX standards (or does so in a way that plays badly with the rest of
Windows). Very often, the changes needed in open-source or
*nix-heritage software to make them more Windows-friendly are small. A
common example is changing old-style "fork + exec" paths to "spawn"
calls which are more modern and more efficient (even on *nix). With
such small changes, programs can be compiled on thin compatibility
layers like mingw instead, with the result being a lot faster, smoother,
better integrated with Windows, and without that special tier of
DLL-hell reserved for cygwin1.dll and its friends.

So the earliest gcc versions I built and used on Windows, gcc 2.95 for
the m68k IIRC, had to be built with Cygwin. By the time I was using gcc
4+, perhaps earlier, it was all mingw-based and I have rarely looked at
Cygwin since.

I strongly recommend msys2, with mingw-64, as the way to handle *nix
programs on Windows. You can install and use as much as you want - it's
fine to take most simple programs and use them independently on other
Windows systems with no or a minimum of dll's. (If the program relies
on many external files, it will need the msys2 file tree.) You can use
msys2 bash if you like, or not if you don't like. The mingw-64 gcc has
a modern, complete and efficient C library instead of the horrendous
MSVCCRT dll. Most Windows ports of *nix software is made with either
older mingw or newer mingw-64.

I can understand using Cygwin simply because you've always used Cygwin,
or if you really need fuller POSIX compatibility. But these days, WSL
is probably a better option if that's what you need.

[David Brown]

That is kind of what I thought. CMake sounds like a good solution if
you want to make a program that compiles on Linux with native gcc, and
also with MSVC on Windows, and perhaps a few other native build
combinations. But it is not really suited for microcontroller builds as
far as I can see. (Again, I haven't tried it much, and don't want to do
it injustice by being too categorical.)

[Stefan Reuther]

Am 04.12.2021 um 16:23 schrieb pozz:
> Il 04/12/2021 10:31, Stefan Reuther ha scritto:
>> I'm not sure what you need order-only dependencies for. For a project
>> like this, with GNU make I'd most likely just do something like
>>
>>      OBJ = file1.o module1/file2.o module2/file3.o
>>      main: $(OBJ)
>>           $(CC) -o $@ $(OBJ)
>>      $(OBJ): %.o: $(SRCDIR)/%.c
>>           mkdir $(dir $@)
>>           $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@
>
> This is suboptimal. Every time one object file is created (because it is
> not present or because prerequisites aren't satisfied), mkdir command is
> executed, even if $(dir $@) is already created.

(did I really forget the '-p'?)

The idea was that creating a directory and checking for its existence
both require a path lookup, which is the expensive operation here.

When generating the Makefile with a script, it's easy to sneak a 100%
matching directory creation dependency into any rule that needs it

foo/bar.o: bar.c foo/.mark
...
foo/.mark:
mkdir foo

>>> Dependencies must be created as a side effect of compilation with
>>> esoteric -M options for gcc.
>>
>> It's not too bad with sufficiently current versions.
>>
>>      CFLAGS += -MMD -MP
>>      -include $(OBJ:.o=.d)
>
> Are you sure you don't need -MT too, to specify exactly the target rule?

Documentation says you are right, but '-MMD -MP' works fine for me so far...


Stefan

[Stefan Reuther]

Am 04.12.2021 um 22:17 schrieb David Brown:
> On 04/12/2021 20:53, George Neuner wrote:
>> On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 21:28:54 -0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards

>>> I always had good luck using Cygwin and gnu "make" on Windows to run
>>> various Win32 .exe command line compilers (e.g. IAR). I (thankfully)
>>> haven't needed to do that for several years now...
>>
>> The problem with Cygwin is it doesn't play well with native Windows
>> GCC (MingW et al).

[...]

> I concur with that. Cygwin made sense long ago, but for the past couple
> of decades the mingw-based alternatives have been more appropriate for
> most uses of *nix stuff on Windows. In particular, Cygwin is a thick
> compatibility layer that has its own filesystem, process management, and
> other features to fill in the gaps where Windows doesn't fulfil the
> POSIX standards (or does so in a way that plays badly with the rest of
> Windows).

The problem is that both projects, Cygwin and MinGW/MSYS, provide much
more than just a compiler, and in an incompatible way, which is probably
incompatible with what your toolchain does, and incompatible with what
Visual Studio does.

"-Ic:\test" specifies one path name for Windows, but probably two for a
toolchain with Unix heritage, where ":" is the separator, not a drive
letter. Cygwin wants "-I/cygdrive/c" instead, (some versions of) MinGW
want "-I/c". That, on the other hand, might be an option "-I" followed
by an option "/c" for a toolchain with Windows heritage.

The problem domain is complex, therefore solutions need to be complex.

That aside, I found staying within one universe ("use all from Cygwin",
"use all from MinGW") to work pretty well; when having to call into
another universe (e.g. native Win32), be careful to not use, for
example, any absolute paths.


Stefan

[David Brown]

On 05/12/2021 11:02, Stefan Reuther wrote:
> Am 04.12.2021 um 22:17 schrieb David Brown:
>> On 04/12/2021 20:53, George Neuner wrote:
>>> On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 21:28:54 -0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards
>>>> I always had good luck using Cygwin and gnu "make" on Windows to run
>>>> various Win32 .exe command line compilers (e.g. IAR). I (thankfully)
>>>> haven't needed to do that for several years now...
>>>
>>> The problem with Cygwin is it doesn't play well with native Windows
>>> GCC (MingW et al).
> [...]
>> I concur with that. Cygwin made sense long ago, but for the past couple
>> of decades the mingw-based alternatives have been more appropriate for
>> most uses of *nix stuff on Windows. In particular, Cygwin is a thick
>> compatibility layer that has its own filesystem, process management, and
>> other features to fill in the gaps where Windows doesn't fulfil the
>> POSIX standards (or does so in a way that plays badly with the rest of
>> Windows).
>
> The problem is that both projects, Cygwin and MinGW/MSYS, provide much
> more than just a compiler, and in an incompatible way, which is probably
> incompatible with what your toolchain does, and incompatible with what
> Visual Studio does.

Neither Cygwin nor msys are compilers or toolchains. Nor is MSVS, for
that matter. That would only be a problem if you misunderstood what
they are.

>
> "-Ic:\test" specifies one path name for Windows, but probably two for a
> toolchain with Unix heritage, where ":" is the separator, not a drive
> letter. Cygwin wants "-I/cygdrive/c" instead, (some versions of) MinGW
> want "-I/c". That, on the other hand, might be an option "-I" followed
> by an option "/c" for a toolchain with Windows heritage.
>

Drive letters on Windows have always been a PITA. Usually, IME, it is
not a big issue for compilation - most of your include directories will
be on the same drive you are working in (with "system" includes already
handled by the compiler configuration). Use a makefile, make the base
part a variable, then at most you only have to change one part. It's a
good idea anyway to have things like base paths to includes as a
variable in the makefile.

One of the differences between msys and cygwin is the way they handle
paths - msys has a method that is simpler and closer to Windows, while
cygwin is a bit more "alien" but supports more POSIX features (like
links). In practice, with programs compiled for the "mingw" targets you
can usually use Windows names and paths without further ado. On my
Windows systems, I put msys2's "/usr/bin" directory on my normal PATH,
and from the standard Windows command prompt I happily use make, grep,
less, cp, ssh, and other *nix tools without problems or special
consideration.

[David Brown]

On 05/12/2021 11:11, Stefan Reuther wrote:
> Am 04.12.2021 um 16:23 schrieb pozz:
>> Il 04/12/2021 10:31, Stefan Reuther ha scritto:
>>> I'm not sure what you need order-only dependencies for. For a project
>>> like this, with GNU make I'd most likely just do something like
>>>
>>>      OBJ = file1.o module1/file2.o module2/file3.o
>>>      main: $(OBJ)
>>>           $(CC) -o $@ $(OBJ)
>>>      $(OBJ): %.o: $(SRCDIR)/%.c
>>>           mkdir $(dir $@)
>>>           $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@
>>
>> This is suboptimal. Every time one object file is created (because it is
>> not present or because prerequisites aren't satisfied), mkdir command is
>> executed, even if $(dir $@) is already created.
>
> (did I really forget the '-p'?)
>
> The idea was that creating a directory and checking for its existence
> both require a path lookup, which is the expensive operation here.
>

Checking for the path is not expensive - it is already necessary to have
the path details read from the filesystem (and therefore cached, even on
Windows) because you want to put a file in it. So it is free. "mkdir
-p" is also very cheap - it only needs to do something if the path does
not exist. (Of course, on Windows starting any process takes time and
resources an order of magnitude or more greater than on *nix.) It is
always nice to avoid unnecessary effort, as even small inefficiencies
add up if there are enough of them. But there's no need to worry unduly
about the small things.

> When generating the Makefile with a script, it's easy to sneak a 100%
> matching directory creation dependency into any rule that needs it
>
> foo/bar.o: bar.c foo/.mark
> ...
> foo/.mark:
> mkdir foo
>

And it's easy to forget the "touch foo/.mark" command to make that work!

But that is completely unnecessary - make is perfectly capable of
working with a directory as a dependency and target (especially as an
order-only dependency).

[Grant Edwards]

On 2021-12-04, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>
>> I succeeded to use CMake for cross-compiling on PC Linux for Raspi OS
>> Linux, but the compiler identification for a raw metal target was not
>> happy when the trial compilation could not link a run file using the
>> Linux run file creation model.
>
> That is kind of what I thought. CMake sounds like a good solution if
> you want to make a program that compiles on Linux with native gcc, and
> also with MSVC on Windows, and perhaps a few other native build
> combinations. But it is not really suited for microcontroller builds as
> far as I can see. (Again, I haven't tried it much, and don't want to do
> it injustice by being too categorical.)

I use CMake for cross-compilation for microcontroller stuff. I don't
use it for my own code, but there are a few 3rd-party libraries that
use it, and I don't have any problems configuring it to use a cross
compiler.

--
Grant

[Grant Edwards]

On 2021-12-04, George Neuner <gneu...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 21:28:54 -0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards
><inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On 2021-12-03, Theo <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> [*] Powershell and WSL have been trying to improve this. But I've not seen
>>> any build flows that make much use of them, beyond simply taking Linux flows
>>> and running them in WSL.
>>
>>I always had good luck using Cygwin and gnu "make" on Windows to run
>>various Win32 .exe command line compilers (e.g. IAR). I (thankfully)
>>haven't needed to do that for several years now...
>
> The problem with Cygwin is it doesn't play well with native Windows
> GCC (MingW et al).

It's always worked fine for me.

> Cygwin compilers produce executables that depend on the /enormous/
> Cygwin library.

I wasn't talking about using Cygwin compilers. I was talking about
using Cygwin to do cross-compilation using compilers like IAR.

> You can statically link the library or ship the DLL (or an installer
> that downloads it) with your program, but by doing so your programs
> falls under GPL - the terms of which are not acceptable to some
> developers.
>
> And the Cygwin environment is ... less than stable. Any update to
> Windows can break it.

That's definitely true. :/

[David Brown]

OK. As I said, I haven't looked in detail or tried much. Maybe I will,
one day when I have time.

[Grant Edwards]

I see no reason at all to use for embedded code unless you want to use
a large 3rd party library that already uses it, and you want to use
that library's existing cmake build process. For smaller libraries,
it's probably easier to write a makefile from scratch.

IMO, configuring stuff that uses cmake seems very obtuse and fragile —
but that's probably because I don't use it much.

--
Grant

[Dave Nadler]

For my most recent projects, I'm using Eclipse and letting it generate
the make files. I find it necessary to manually clean up the XML
controlling Eclipse to ensure that there are no hard-coded paths and
everything uses sane path variables (after starting with
vendor-tool-generated project).

I have multiple projects in the workspace:
1) target project uses the GCC ARM cross-compiler (debug and release
targets), and
2) for host builds of debug+test software, one or more minGW GCC projects

Its not optimal but it does work without too much grief.
Does a poor job for understanding/maintaining those places where
different compiler options are needed (fortunately not many).

I read *the* book on CMake and my head hurts, plus the book is revised
every three weeks as CMake adds or fixes numerous 'special' things.
Haven't actually used it yet but might try (with Zephyr).

My older big projects are primarily make (with dozens of targets
including intermediate preprocess stuff), plus separate Visual Studio
build for a simulator, an Eclipse build (auto-generated make) for one of
the embedded components, and Linux Eclipse build (auto-generated make)
for Linux versions of utilities. All this is painful to maintain and
keep synchronized. Sure would like to see a better way to handle all the
different targets and platforms (which CMake should help with but I'm
really not sure how to wrangle the thing).

Interesting discussion!

[pozz]

Il 02/12/2021 12:46, pozz ha scritto:

[...]

> Do you use IDE or Makefile? Is there a recent and much better
> alternative to make (such as cmake or SCons)?

I reply to this post for a few questions on make.

For embedded projects, we use at least one cross-compiler. I usually use
two compilers: cross-compiler for the embedded target and
native-compiler for creating a "simulator" for the host or for running
some tests on the host.

I'm thinking to use an env variable to choose between the targets:

make TARGET=embedded|host

If the native compiler is usually already on the PATH (even if I prefer
to avoid), cross-compiler is usually not already in the PATH. How do you
solve this?

I'm thinking to use again env variables and set them in a batch script
path.bat that is machine dependent (so it shouldn't be tracked by git).

SET GNU_ARM=c:\nxp\MCUXpressoIDE_11.2.1_4149...
SET MINGW_PATH=c:\mingw64

In the makefile:

ifeq($(TARGET),embedded)
CC := "$(GNU_ARM)/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc"
CPP...
else ifeq($(TARGET),host)
CC := $(MINGW_PATH)/bin/gcc
CPP...
endif

In this way, I launch path.bat only one time on my windows development
machine and run make TARGET= during development.


Another issue is with internal commands of cmd.exe. GNU make for
Windows, ARM gcc, mingw and so on are able to manage paths with
Unix-like slash, but Windows internal commands such as mkdir, del does not.
I think it's much better to use Unix like commands (mkdir, rm) that can
be installed with coreutils[1] for Windows.

So in path.bat I add the coreutils folder to PATH:

SET COREUTILS_PATH=C:\TOOLS\COREUTILS

and in Makefile:

MKDIR := $(COREUTILS_PATH)/bin/mkdir
RM := $(COREUTILS_PATH)/bin/rm


Do you use better solutions?


[1] http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm

[pozz]

Il 04/12/2021 17:41, David Brown ha scritto:
[...]

>> This is suboptimal. Every time one object file is created (because it is
>> not present or because prerequisites aren't satisfied), mkdir command is
>> executed, even if $(dir $@) is already created.
>
> Use existence-only dependencies:
>
> target/%.o : %.c | target
> $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@
>
> target :
> mkdir -p target

Do you replicate the source tree in the target directory for build?

I'd prefer to have the same tree in source and build dirs:

src/
file1.c
mod1/
file1.c
mod2/
file1.c
build/
file1.o
mod1/
file1.o
mod2/
file1.o

With your rules above, I don't think this can be done. target is only
the main build directory, but I need to create subdirectories too.

I understood for this I need to use $(@D) in prerequisites and this can
be done only with second expansion.

.SECONDEXPANSION:

target/%.o : %.c target/%.d | $$(@D)

$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

$(BUILD_DIRS):
$(MKDIR) -p $@

[Johann Klammer]

On 12/02/2021 12:46 PM, pozz wrote:
>
> Do you use IDE or Makefile? Is there a recent and much better alternative to make (such as cmake or SCons)?
>

Whatever will run on your box.(usually that's make/automake and nothing else)

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 09.12.2021 um 11:54 schrieb pozz:

> I'd prefer to have the same tree in source and build dirs:

What on earth for?

Subdirectories for sources are necessary to organize our work, because
humans can't deal too well with folders filled with hundreds of files,
and because we fare better with the project's top-down structure
tangibly represented as a tree of subfolders.

But let's face it: we very rarely even look at object files, much less
work on them in any meaningful fashion. They just have to be somewhere,
but it's no particular burden at all if they're all in a single folder,
per primary build target. They're for the compiler and make alone to
work on, not for humans. So they don't have to be organized for human
consumption.

That's why virtually all hand-written Makefiles I've ever seen, and a
large portion of the auto-generated ones, too, keep all of a target's
object, list and dependency files in a single folder. Mechanisms like
VPATH exist for the express purpose of easing this approach, and the
built-in rules and macros also largely rely on it.

The major exception in this regard is CMake, which does indeed mirror
the source tree layout --- but that's manageable for them only because
their Makefiles, being fully machine-generated, can become almost
arbitrarily complex, for no extra cost. Nobody in full possession of
their mental capabilities would ever write Makefiles the way CMake does
it, by hand.

[David Brown]

There are other automatic systems that mirror the structure of the
source tree for object files, dependency files and list files (yes, some
people still like these). Eclipse does it, for example, and therefore
the majority of vendor-supplied toolkits since most are Eclipse based.
(I don't know if NetBeans and Visual Studio / Visual Studio Code do so -
these are the other two IDE's commonly used by manufacturer tools).

The big advantage of having object directories that copy source
directories is that it all works even if you have more than one file
with the same name. Usually, of course, you want to avoid name
conflicts - there are risks of other issues or complications such as
header guard symbols that are not unique (they /can/ include directory
information and not just the filename, but they don't always do so) and
you have to be careful that you #include the files you meant. But with
big projects containing SDK files, third-party libraries, RTOS's,
network stacks, and perhaps files written by many people working
directly on the project, conflicts happen. "timers.c" and "utils.c"
sound great to start with, but there is a real possibility of more than
one turning up in a project.

It is not at all hard to make object files mirror the source tree, and
it adds nothing to the build time. For large projects, it is clearly
worth the effort. (For small projects, it is probably not necessary.)

[Stefan Reuther]

Am 10.12.2021 um 18:35 schrieb Hans-Bernhard Bröker:
> Am 09.12.2021 um 11:54 schrieb pozz:
>> I'd prefer to have the same tree in source and build dirs:
>
> What on earth for?
>
> Subdirectories for sources are necessary to organize our work, because
> humans can't deal too well with folders filled with hundreds of files,
> and because we fare better with the project's top-down structure
> tangibly represented as a tree of subfolders.
>
> But let's face it: we very rarely even look at object files, much less
> work on them in any meaningful fashion.  They just have to be somewhere,
> but it's no particular burden at all if they're all in a single folder,
> per primary build target.

But sometimes, we do look at them. Especially in an embedded context.
One example could be things like stack consumption analysis. Or to
answer the question "how much code size do I pay for using this C++
feature?". "Did the compiler correctly inline this function I expected
it to inline?".

And if the linker gives me a "duplicate definition" error, I prefer that
it is located in 'editor.o', not '3d3901cdeade62df1565f9616e607f89.o'.

> The major exception in this regard is CMake, which does indeed mirror
> the source tree layout --- but that's manageable for them only because
> their Makefiles, being fully machine-generated, can become almost
> arbitrarily complex, for no extra cost.  Nobody in full possession of
> their mental capabilities would ever write Makefiles the way CMake does
> it, by hand.

The main reason I'd never write Makefiles the way CMake does it is that
CMake's makefiles are horribly inefficient...

But otherwise, once you got infrastructure to place object files in SOME
subdirectory in your build system, mirroring the source structure is
easy and gives a usability win.


Stefan

[pozz]

Atmel Studio, now Microchip Studio, that is based on Visual Studio
mirrors exactly the source tree to the build dir.

> The big advantage of having object directories that copy source
> directories is that it all works even if you have more than one file
> with the same name. Usually, of course, you want to avoid name
> conflicts - there are risks of other issues or complications such as
> header guard symbols that are not unique (they /can/ include directory
> information and not just the filename, but they don't always do so) and
> you have to be careful that you #include the files you meant. But with
> big projects containing SDK files, third-party libraries, RTOS's,
> network stacks, and perhaps files written by many people working
> directly on the project, conflicts happen. "timers.c" and "utils.c"
> sound great to start with, but there is a real possibility of more than
> one turning up in a project.

Yes, these are the reasons why I'd like to put object files in
subdirectories.

> It is not at all hard to make object files mirror the source tree, and
> it adds nothing to the build time. For large projects, it is clearly
> worth the effort. (For small projects, it is probably not necessary.)

Ok, it's not too hard (nothing is hard when you know how to do it), but
it's not that simple too.

[David Brown]

On 11/12/2021 16:18, pozz wrote:

>
> Ok, it's not too hard (nothing is hard when you know how to do it), but
> it's not that simple too.
>

Of course.

And once you've got a makefile you like for one project, you copy it for
the next. I don't think I have started writing a new makefile in 25 years!

[Grant Edwards]

Too true.

You don't write a Makefile from scratch any more than you sit down
with some carbon, water, nitrogen, phosphorus and whatnot and make an
apple tree.

You look around and find an nice existing one that's closest to what
you want, copy it, and start tweaking.

--
Grant

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 11.12.2021 um 10:01 schrieb Stefan Reuther:
> Am 10.12.2021 um 18:35 schrieb Hans-Bernhard Bröker:

>> But let's face it: we very rarely even look at object files, much less
>> work on them in any meaningful fashion.  They just have to be somewhere,
>> but it's no particular burden at all if they're all in a single folder,
>> per primary build target.
>
> But sometimes, we do look at them. Especially in an embedded context.

In my experience, looking at individual object files does not occur in
embedded context any more often than in others.

> One example could be things like stack consumption analysis.

That one's actually easier if you have the object files all in a single
folder, as the tool will have to look at all of them anyway, so it helps
if you can just pass it objdir/*.o.

Or to
> answer the question "how much code size do I pay for using this C++
> feature?". "Did the compiler correctly inline this function I expected
> it to inline?".

Both of those are way easier to check in the debugger or in the mapfile,
than by inspecting individual object files.

>
> And if the linker gives me a "duplicate definition" error, I prefer that
> it is located in 'editor.o', not '3d3901cdeade62df1565f9616e607f89.o'.

Both are equally useless. You want to know which source file they're in,
not which object files.

Do you actually use a tool that obfuscates the o file nimes like that?

> But otherwise, once you got infrastructure to place object files in SOME
> subdirectory in your build system, mirroring the source structure is
> easy and gives a usability win.

I don't think you've actually mentioned a single one, so far. None of
the things you mentioned had anything to do with _where_ the object
files are.

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 10.12.2021 um 19:44 schrieb David Brown:

> The big advantage of having object directories that copy source
> directories is that it all works even if you have more than one file
> with the same name.

Setting aside the issue whether the build can actually handle that
("module names" in the code tend to only be based on the basename of the
source, not its full path, so they would clash anyway), that should
remain an exceptional mishap. I don't subscribe to the idea of making
my everyday life harder to account for (usually) avoidable exceptions
like that.

[Stefan Reuther]

Am 11.12.2021 um 18:47 schrieb Hans-Bernhard Bröker:
> Am 11.12.2021 um 10:01 schrieb Stefan Reuther:
>> Am 10.12.2021 um 18:35 schrieb Hans-Bernhard Bröker:
>>> But let's face it: we very rarely even look at object files, much less
>>> work on them in any meaningful fashion.  They just have to be somewhere,
>>> but it's no particular burden at all if they're all in a single folder,
>>> per primary build target.
>>
>> But sometimes, we do look at them. Especially in an embedded context.
>
> In my experience, looking at individual object files does not occur in
> embedded context any more often than in others.

Neither in my experience, but this is because I look at individual
object files even for desktop/server applications, but I don't expect
that to be the rule :)

>> Or to
>> answer the question "how much code size do I pay for using this C++
>> feature?". "Did the compiler correctly inline this function I expected
>> it to inline?".
>
> Both of those are way easier to check in the debugger or in the mapfile,
> than by inspecting individual object files.

For me, 'objdump -dr blah.o | less' or 'nm blah.o | awk ...' is the
easiest way to answer such questions. The output of 'objdump | less' is
much easier to handle than gdb's 'disas'. And how do you even get
function sizes with a debugger?

>> And if the linker gives me a "duplicate definition" error, I prefer that
>> it is located in 'editor.o', not '3d3901cdeade62df1565f9616e607f89.o'.
>
> Both are equally useless. You want to know which source file they're in,
> not which object files.

I want to know in what translation unit they are in. It doesn't help to
know that the duplicate definition comes from 'keys.inc' which is
supposed to be included exactly once. I want to know which two
translation units included it, and for that it helps to have the name of
the translation unit - the initial *.c/cpp file - encoded in the object
file name.

> Do you actually use a tool that obfuscates the o file nimes like that?

Encoding the command-line that generates a file (as a cryptographic
hash) into the file name is a super-easy way to implement
rebuild-on-rule-change. I use that for a number of temporary files.

I do not use that for actual object files for the reasons given, but it
would technically make sense.

> I don't think you've actually mentioned a single one, so far.  None of
> the things you mentioned had anything to do with _where_ the object
> files are.

There are no hard technical reasons. It's all about usability, and
that's about the things you actually do. If you got a GUI that takes you
to the assembler code of a function with a right-click in the editor,
you don't need 'objdump'. I don't have such a GUI and don't want it most
of the time.


Stefan

[David Brown]

Nor do I. But as I said, and as others know, supporting object files in
a tree is not difficult in a makefile, and it is common practice for
many build systems. I can't think of any that /don't/ support it (not
that I claim to have used a sizeable proportion of build systems).

If it is easy to avoid a particular class of problem, and have a nice,
neat structure, then what's the problem with having object files in a tree?

After all, the basic principle of an automatically maintained makefile
(or other build system) is:

1. Find all the source files - src/x/y/z.c - in whatever source paths
you have specified.

2. Determine all the object files you need by swapping ".c" for ".o",
and changing the "src" directory for the "build" directory, giving you a
list build/x/y/z.o.

3. Figure out a set of dependency rules for these, either using
something like "gcc -M...", or the lazy method of making all object
files depend on all headers, or something inbetween.

4. Make your binary file depend on all the build/x/y/z.o files.


As I see it, it is simpler, clearer and more natural that the object
files (and dependencies, lists files, etc.) follow the structure of the
source files. I'd have to go out of my way to make a riskier system
that put all the object files in one place.

[chris]

Used cygwin for years just to have access to the unix utils and X
so I could run my favourite nedit fs editor, Never ran compilers
though it, but hassle free experience once setup. That was the 32 bit
version, sadly no longer available...

Chris

[chris]

On 12/02/21 11:46, pozz wrote:
> When I download C source code (for example for Linux), most of the time
> I need to use make (or autoconf).
>
> In embedded world (no Linux embedded), we use MCUs produced by a silicon
> vendor that give you at least a ready-to-use IDE (Elipse based or Visual
> Studio based or proprietary). Recently it give you a full set of
> libraries, middlewares, tools to create a complex project from scratch
> in a couple of minutes that is compatibile and buildable with its IDE.
>
> Ok, it's a good thing to start with a minimal effort and make some tests
> on EVB and new chips. However I'm wondering if a good quality
> commercial/industrial grade software is maintained under the IDE of the
> silicon vendor or it is maintained with a Makefile (or similar).
>
> I'm asking this, because I just started to add some unit tests (to run
> on the host machine) on one of my projects that is built under the IDE.
> Without a Makefile is very difficult to add a series of tests: do I
> create a different IDE project for each module test?
>
> Moreover, the build process of a project maintained under an IDE is
> manual (click on a button). Most of the time there isn't the possibility
> to build by a command line and when it is possible, it isn't the
> "normal" way.
>
> Many times in the past I tried to write a Makefile for my projects, but
> sincerely for me make tool is very criptic (tabs instead of spaces?).
> Dependencies are a mess.
>

> Do you use IDE or Makefile? Is there a recent and much better
> alternative to make (such as cmake or SCons)?
>

Have a standard Makefile template that gets edited for each new project
or part thereof.

IDE systems may have their attractions, but usually don't like their
editors, nor the plethora of config files. The more plain vanilla the
better here, hence makefiles as the least hassle and most productive
route. Need to have full visibility from top to bottom and some ide's
can be pretty opaque.

Older versions of netbeans looked interesting though...

Chris

[StateMachineCOM]

Would anyone point me to a good Makefile template for building a simple embedded project with GNU-ARM?

[chris]

On 12/21/21 01:18, StateMachineCOM wrote:
> Would anyone point me to a good Makefile template for building a simple embedded project with GNU-ARM?

I'm sure they must exist but perhaps most generate their own. Look
at how others have done it, but the key is to keep it simple to
start. Define a root path for sources and subdirs. same for tools
and libraries. Then some simple rules to relate compiler to srcs
and objects. You only need to understand the make basics to get
started. The syntax is arcane and it can seem opaque in error
message terms, but you just have to persevere until you have
something working.

Here's a snippet from a makefile here nothing clever, but try
to abstract as much as possible to aid reuse. Like to keep it
neat and tidy, as this aids understanding and you only need
to do that once.

# Local Project Directories

ROOT = /export/nfs/sas8x600/system/projects/ntp-tests
PRJROOT = $(ROOT)/ntp-client

SRCDIR = $(PRJROOT)/src
INCDIR = $(PRJROOT)/inc
OBJDIR = $(PRJROOT)/obj
BINDIR = $(PRJROOT)/bin
LIBDIR = $(PRJROOT)/lib

# Library & Test Rig

PRJLIB = ntplib.a
PRJBIN = ntpbin

# Subsystem libraries and includes

SYSINC = $(ROOT)/sysinc
SYSLIB = $(ROOT)/syslib

# Tools

GCCROOT = /usr/local

GCCINC = $(GCCROOT)/include
GCCBIN = $(GCCROOT)/bin
GCCLIB = $(GCCROOT)/lib
GCCRTL = $(GCCLIB)/gcc/sparc-sun-solaris2.10/4.6.1

GCCOBJS = $(GCCRTL)/crt1.o $(GCCRTL)/crti.o $(GCCRTL)/crtbegin.o
$(GCCRTL)/crtend.o $(GCCRTL)/crtn.o

CC = $(GCCBIN)/gcc
CFLAGS = -c -O2 -ansi -Wall

AS = as
ASFLAGS =

LD = ld
LDFLAGS = -L/usr/local/lib/gcc/sparc-sun-solaris2.10/4.6.1
-R/usr/local/lib -lc -lsocket -s

AR = ar
ARFLAGS = crvs

INCLUDES = -I$(INCDIR) -I$(SYSINC)

#
# Dependency Search Paths
#
vpath %.h $(INCDIR)
vpath %.c $(SRCDIR)
vpath %.o $(OBJDIR)

#
# Rules
#
.SUFFIXES:
.SUFFIXES: .c .o

.c.o:
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) -c $(SRCDIR)/$< -o $(OBJDIR)/$@

# Network Function Library
#
LIBINCS = network.h
LIBSRCS = network.c
LIBOBJS = network.o

# Executable Test Harness

SRCS = main.c network.c
OBJS = main.o network.o

# Default Target: Build Library and Test Harness
#
default: $(LIBOBJS) $(OBJS) $(SRCS)
$(AR) $(ARFLAGS) $(LIBDIR)/$(PRJLIB) $(addprefix $(OBJDIR)/, $(LIBOBJS))
$(LD) $(LDFLAGS) $(OBJDIR)/main.o $(GCCOBJS) $(LIBDIR)/$(PRJLIB) -o
$(SRCDIR)/$(PRJBIN)
cp $(LIBDIR)/$(PRJLIB) $(SYSLIB)/$(PRJLIB)
cp $(addprefix $(INCDIR)/, $(LIBINCS)) $(SYSINC)

# Start Over...
#
clean:
rm -f $(BINDIR)/$(PRJBIN) $(OBJDIR)/*.o $(LIBDIR)/$(PRJLIB)
$(SYSLIB)/$(PRJLIB) $(addprefix $(SYSINC)/, $(LIBINCS))


This wasn't for an embedded project, but nothing clever or obscure
and could probably be improved, so pull it to bits if you like...

Chris

[Jim Jackson]

On 2021-12-21, StateMachineCOM <statemac...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Would anyone point me to a good Makefile template for building a
> simple embedded project with GNU-ARM?

I've used this one ...

https://mithatkonar.com/wiki/doku.php/microcontrollers/avr_makefile_template

[StateMachineCOM]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I'll study them carefully,

I'm already using a homegrown Makefile "template", such as this one:

https://github.com/QuantumLeaps/qpc/blob/master/examples/arm-cm/blinky_ek-tm4c123gxl/qk/gnu/Makefile

The Makefile supports multiple build configurations (Debug, Release, and "Spy" with software tracing), generation of dependencies, etc.. It is pretty straightforward with all source files, directories and libraries configurable. The Makefile uses VPATH to simplify the search for the sources. This really simplifies things, but requires unique file names for sources.

I'm not sure if this Makefile looks "professional" enough to experts. Any constructive critique and suggestions for improvement will be welcome.

Miro