[ILUG] Wildcards in makefile

[Brendan Halpin]

Conor Daly <conor.daly_ilug at cod.homelinux.org> writes:

> I have a Makefile that installs manpages (among other things).  Now, I
> know this is probably a terrible thing to do, the user should really work
> out how the program works by experimentation.  However, I have a growing
> list of manpages and it's getting a bit tedious.  I currently have lines
> of the form:
>
> 	cp ../man3/csvtokenise.3 $(MANDIR)/man3/; \

Wildcards work in makefile variables. 

manpages = ../man3/*.[123]

target: something
	cp $(manpages) $(MANDIR)/man3/

or 

manpages = page1.3 page2.3 pageX.3
target: something
	cp ../man3/$(manpages) $(MANDIR)/man3/

Gnu make has all sorts of extensions that can make life easier, and
makefiles horrendously complicated. See for instance
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Foreach-Function 

Brendan
-- 
Brendan Halpin,  Department of Sociology,  University of Limerick,  Ireland
Tel: w +353-61-213147 f +353-61-202569 h +353-61-338562; Room F2-025 x 3147
mailto:brendan.halpin at ul.ie  http://www.ul.ie/sociology/brendan.halpin.html