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makeThe make utility automatically determines which pieces of a large
program need to be recompiled, and issues commands to recompile them.
This manual describes GNU make, which was implemented by Richard
Stallman and Roland McGrath. Development since Version 3.76 has been
handled by Paul D. Smith.
GNU make conforms to section 6.2 of IEEE Standard
1003.2-1992 (POSIX.2).
Our examples show C programs, since they are most common, but you can use
make with any programming language whose compiler can be run with a
shell command. Indeed, make is not limited to programs. You can
use it to describe any task where some files must be updated automatically
from others whenever the others change.