Using latex-makefile for more than one project

[Ramana]

latex-makefile is awesome. I want to use it for many of my LaTeX
projects. So that I can keep it up to date, I create a symbolic link
to my one copy of the Makefile in every directory I want to call make
<foo>.pdf. Different projects might have different Makefile.ini files,
but they should all share the same latex Makefile. Is there any make
technology (e.g. allow a global default makefile) that would let me do
this without the symlinks?

[Chris Monson]

Yeah, you can do this without symlinks using the -f flag to "make", but I'm guessing that you want something more automatic.

I don't know of any automatic way to have a Makefile that is a global fallback for everything (if you take this idea to its natural conclusion, it doesn't really make sense anyway - you don't want your C code falling back to the LaTeX Makefile if it doesn't find a build rule).

So, yes and no.  If you don't mind typing make -f /global/location/Makefile instead of just "make", then you don't need the symlinks.  Otherwise, I would just stick with the current approach.

Actually, scratch that.  I would *copy* the makefile into each directory so that if, sometime down the road, you want to rebuild your paper, you aren't dependent on the Makefile being super backward-compatible.  Otherwise you might find that something that once built fine no longer does.

- C