Inproceedings,
MakeIt! -- Generating and Maintaining Makefiles Automatically
Proc. Workshop on Algorithms and Experiments (ALEX'98), page 165--174. Trento, (1998)
Abstract
MakeIt! automizes the process of writing makefiles
for C and C++ projects. MakeIt! supports the idea of
literate programming, i.e. of keeping code and
documentation in one file. From this file, a LaTeX
file with the documentation and product files with
the program code are extracted. All implementation
files are then scanned for include statements in
order to detect dependencies among them. These are
written into so-called dependency files and
subsequently used by the make process to ensure that
products and documentation are up to date. The time
overhead is small since a dependency file contains
only the dependencies deduced from one file. Thus it
can be reused until a change in this file
occurs. MakeIt! simplifies software development
and improves the resulting software in three
ways. o MakeIt! frees the programmer's mind of
the duty of writing and maintaining makefiles, \par
o MakeIt! simplifies (but does not depend on) the
use of literate programming, and o MakeIt!
offers full support for simultaneous work on
different platforms with different compilers, which
is a necessity for developing portable code.
