Makefile Generator

DISCLAIMER

This tool is not intended to be used for production level software or really large projects.
It generates more like of a makefile template to work on (although the generated makefile works as is and will get the job done) with a pretty straightforward way of generation.
That means, it doesn't try to make the most out of the sophisticated make tool.
Long story short, it's a fast way of generating a makefile to get you up and running but it will probably not meet requirements for large projects, so don't use it that way :)

About

NOTE: This program can generate only makefiles for C/C++ programs as it explicitly searches/handles the include structure of the C/C++ model (that means it won't work with C++20 modules).

This tool generates a makefile (the generated file is named Makefile) which can be automatically used to compile your project.
What the program does is to read all the files with the designated extension (either c or cpp. For command line arguments please refer to Command Line Arguments section) and build the dependency graph for each file.
That way it can generate the compilation of each C/C++ file to an object file with the right dependencies. Then all the object files are set as dependencies to the bin target which generates your binary (your executable).
If you have other files with a main function, which will probably be your test files, you can filter them out and create a separate target named tests for these files (for more information check Tests section. More targets to come, such as examples).

Getting started/Installation

In order to get the generator you must have Rust and cargo installed. These can easily be installed by executing the following command on terminal:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
For more information please refer here.

After you have installed Rust, you will have the cargo tool installed as well.

Now you can either execute cargo install makegen and get done with it or clone this repository and manually build the executable.
In order to build it you must be inside the project's directory and run cargo build --release but this wont include the executable in your path, so you won't have it available from every directory in you system. You can easily have it available by creating a symlink in your binaries directory which is in you path by default. In order to achieve that, execute the following while being the project's directory:
sudo ln -s $(pwd)/target/release/makegen /usr/bin/makegen

Generating a Makefile

In order to generate a makefile you must provide some arguments to the makegen executable.
The mandatory parameters are --binary or -b for short and --extension or -e for short.
The first specifies the name of the binary that will be produced when compiling with make.
The second tells the tool to search for files with that extension (which can either be c r cpp for C and C++ files respectively.
Please note that you don't need to prepend the dot (.) in to the extension argument).

NOTE: Please make sure that when running makegen you are in the root directory of the project you are creating the makefile for.

So for example let's say I have a C++ project and a I want to generate a binary named foo.
In order to do that I must run: makegen --binary=foo --extension=cpp
This will generate a file named Makefile in the root of your project.

makegen supports other parameters which are explained below.
You can always run makegen -h or makegen --help for a little more information.

Choosing the Compiler

makegen sets the corresponding GNU compiler based on the extension parameter you provided by default. That would be gcc for C files and g++ for C++ files.
makegen gives you the option to choose the compiler by providing the --compiler or -c for short option. Please note that makegen does not make a check of sorts to verify that the given compiler can compile C or C++ or that it is even a compiler.

Optimization Level

By default makegen sets the optimization flag as -O0 by default. If you want to override that you can provide the --opt flag. For example makegen --binary=foo --extension=cpp --opt=O3

Choosing the Standard

By default makegen sets the compiler to use -std=c99 if you are compiling C code or -std=c++11 if you are compiling C++ code. You can override that by providing the --std flag. For example makegen --binary=foo --extension=cpp --std=c++17

Tests

makegen provides an option, named --tests or -t for short, in which you can specify test files or directories with test files and it will create a separate tests target for you.

This flag defaults to the tests folder (it is ok if you don't have such a folder).
So lets say we have a folder named test_suite which contains our test cases.
In that case you must execute: makegen --binary=foo --extension=cpp --tests=test_suite
This will create a tests target in the Makefile, so you can execute make tests and compile only your tests.
--tests option can appear multiple times and specify multiple folders, files that are tests.

For example let's say in the previous example we have another file named test_foo.cpp
In that case we would execute makegen --binary=foo --extension=cpp --tests=test_suite --tests=test_foo.cpp

Benchmarks

Like tests makegen provides an option named --benchmarks with the same behaviour but generates a benchmarks target.

Examples

Like tests makegen provides an option named --examples with the same behaviour but generates an examples target.

Binaries not falling in the above categories

makegen checks every file for a main function. If it finds one and the file doesn't fall in the above categories (tests, benchmarks, examples) then it creates a separate target named bin_<filename> which runs when you run make.

In order for makegen to handle that case (where you can have multiple unspecified binaries) provides an extra option named --main-file which specifies the file containing the main function that associates with the program name you provided with the --binary option.

By default it has the value main.c if the extension is c or main.cpp if the extension is cpp, so if your main file is actually named main.<extension> you don't have to provide that explicitly.