MPE/iX Shell and Utilities Reference Manual, Vol 1

make(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities make(1)

causes

adding mem.o to library mylib

to be printed.

Refer to Making Libraries in the User’s Guide for more information about libraries and the

.LIBRARY and .LIBRARYM attributes.

Meta-rules

Meta-rules have one target with a single percent symbol which matches an arbitrary string

called the stem; A%B matches any string which starts with preﬁx A and ends with sufﬁx B. A

and/or B may be null. The % in a dependency stands for the stem.

The inference rule to update a target matching pattern p1%s1, where p1 and s1 are preﬁx and

sufﬁx strings of the target, having a prerequisite p2%s2, where % is the stem from the target, is

speciﬁed as a rule:

p1%s1 : p2%s2 ; recipe...

Either the preﬁx or sufﬁx string may be empty

With the internal macros you can specify general inference rules. If the target is out-of-date

with respect to this prerequisite, make executes that inference rule’s recipe.

Transitive Closure

Meta-rules provide a mechanism which allows several meta-rules to chain together to eventu-

ally create the target.

This is called transitive closure. For example, suppose you have the following two meta-rules

%.o : %.c

... rule body...

and

%.c : %.y

... rule body ...

When you specify

make file.o

make uses the ﬁrst meta-rule to look for file.c. If it can’t ﬁnd an explicit rule to build

file.c, it again looks through the meta-rules and ﬁnds the rule that tells it to look for

file.y.

1-344 Commands and Utilities