Building Programs with the make Command

The make utility provides a mechanism for automating the compilation and linking of programs. If the program's source code comes with a makefile—and if the documentation says the program supports Linux—making the program work on your system should be quite easy.

The syntax of the make command is as follows:

make options make target

Because make works based on targets, it is often used to automate not only the building of programs but also other tasks such as program installation and object file maintenance. make runs based on dependencies, which means that a certain condition must be met before the system can carry out another action. This process is usually implemented to force make to build the program ...

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