Managing Projects with GNU make, 3rd Edition (Nutshell Handbooks)

Rating:
Summary: At last!
Review: I'm very glad to see this book finally get updated (I read the Safari version online). It contains some very useful sections on recursive vs non-recursive make, large projects, and building object files outside the source tree. There are lots of clear examples and recipes to use. There's also an article from this book at O'Reilly OnLamp.

The only thing missing, I think, is a good discussion of how to use the GNU autotools, which is what many open source projects ship. Still, they do have a book to themselves (the goat book), though it's a bit outdated now.

If you are already maintaining a project with make, I recommend you buy this book.

~Matt

Disclosure: I'm writing a book (also for O'Reilly) that includes a chapter on build tools such as make, but I have no previous connection with this edition of the book or the author.

Rating:
Summary: best for large projects
Review: In the unix and linux world, make is often the key command at the operating system level when developing a complex application. Where the source for the application often (and indeed should) reside in several directories. While also too in the Microsoft operating systems, GNU offers make.

The standard online man pages are too terse for understanding fully what make can do. Thus this book. It shows the complexity inherent within the make syntax. Added over 20 years, because they were found useful by many. But ironically, this increased power came at a cost of harder learning and usage. Nonetheless, it may well be worth your while to study sections of the book.

Especially the chapter on managing large projects. Experienced developers know that that is when make is truly invaluable. You often have deep directory trees, and each source directory having its own Makefile, that calls those in lower directories. Plus, the ability to only compile what has been changed is a huge time saver.