Making Software
Building software is complicated because source code must be very specifically processed to create a program that works—let alone a program that works well! The make(1) program makes building software easily reproducible, so that a program can be built exactly as the software author intends. make takes its instructions from a configuration file, or makefile, which tells make exactly how to build a program from source. You don’t need to know the internals of a makefile, so we’re not going to dissect one here.
A makefile includes one or more targets and a set of instructions to carry out. For example, typing make install tells make to check the makefile for a procedure called install and, if found, to execute it. A target’s name ...
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