RE: Diagramming a makefile?

[Rakesh Sharma]

 Hello Reinier,

 

Thanks for the pointers regarding the MAKAO utiliity as well as your local 
solution to handle the make -p output.

 

Appears that MAKAO is a full-fledged attempt at generating the DAGs for a 
makefile. But for running your perl code

we need the graphviz utility also to be able to generate DAGs.

 

Regards,

Rakesh

 

 

> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 12:14:42 +0200
> From: address@hidden
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: Diagramming a makefile?
> 
> On Sun Apr 13 22:44:58 2014, address@hidden (Rakesh Sharma) wrote:
> > Hello GNU makers,
> > 
> > Is there any tool/utility which can diagram the DAG of the
> > rules/targets by going thru the makefile? And I don't mean this in
> > a generic way, that all sorts of complex $(eval-ed) rules need to
> > be diagrammed.
> 
> MAKAO:
> 
> http://mcis.polymtl.ca/~bram/makao/
> 
> I haven't used it in a while, but there is a recent release.
> 
> I have a simple Perl script that takes make -p output
> and outputs it in a CSV format that I can filter or convert
> to Graphviz format with other scripts.
> 
> http://www.win.tue.nl/~rp/bin/make2csv
> 
> It doesn't do a perfect job, and other Perl scripts exist with
> the same purpose. However, all of these attempts appear incomplete.
> No doubt there are efforts in other languages, too.
> 
> It would be helpful to have an official, exact description
> of makefile syntax, telling exactly how to parse make -p's output,
> where to find the targets, dependencies, and recipes,
> and what differences exist between versions.
> The source code is the ultimate specification, of course,
> and the info files more or less contain the information,
> but it would be nice to have it isolated in a single place.
> 
> > What I feel is that if we have a picture of the DAG of a makefile,
> > then we can better understand the behavior of make. And vice versa
> > too, we can start off writing a makefile by drawing the DAG first &
> > then convert that into a makefile (the rules portion).
> > 
> > Considering that make is nearing 4 decades, it's hard to believe
> > that such utilities are not already available.
> 
> Some are, but it's hard for them to guarantee 100% accuracy
> (leaving aside the issue of dynamic rule generation),
> as makefile syntax may slightly change from version to version.
> 
> > Thanks, Rakesh
> 
> -- 
> Reinier Post
> TU Eindhoven
> 
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