Makefiles specify instructions for how software programs should be compiled — it specifies all the dependencies and how the different files should be linked and compiled. It relies on a UNIX utility called make that checks the time a file was last modified and what exactly needs to be recompiled.

Don’t need to know for ECE244. This may be a useful resource to look at later.

Flags:

  • -jn will parallelise building executables. n is a value that specifies how many build steps should be executed concurrently. Common values for n include 4 or 8, i.e., make -j8.