A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® 8

make: Keeps a Set of Programs Current

When you have a large program with many source and header files, the files typically depend on one another in complex ways. When you change a file that other files depend on, you must recompile all dependent files. For example, you might have several source files, all of which use a single header file. When you make a change to the header file, each of the source files must be recompiled. The header file might depend on other header files, and so forth. Figure 16-3 shows a simple example of dependency relationships. Each arrow in this figure points from a file to another file that depends on it. See also make on page 1247 in Part III.

Figure 16-3. Dependency graph for the target form

When you are working ...