Latest beta: 2.13-beta1
Latest release: 2.12
tmake was originally developed by Trolltech to autogenerate Makefiles for building the cross-platform GUI toolkit Qt. It has evolved to support around 15 different C++ compilers integrating with build tools such as moc, as well as generating IDE project files for Microsoft Visual Studio. It automatically deals with operating system specific details such as linkage libraries and pathing ideosyncracies across a wide range of operating systems including 15 flavors of Unix, Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and the Cygwin/MinGW win32 unix environments. It also supports embedded systems and processors including the arm, ipaq, sharp, cassiopeia, koala, mips, and qnx-rtp.
tmake is written in Perl and requires that you have installed perl version 5 or newer. Basic use of tmake requires no perl knowledge, but if you know perl you can extend tmake and write your own makefile templates.
For a full listing of features and options available, please look at the tmake reference manual. The available tmake output types are listed in the tmake output manual. Enhancements added to each new version of tmake are listed in this distribution's CHANGES file.
tmake is free software and you may use, copy, modify and distribute tmake and its documentation for any purpose and without any fee. See the LICENSE file for details.
Feedback is highly appreciated. Contact the current maintainer, Geoff Brimhall (brimhall@pobox.com), if you have ideas, patches etc. for tmake.
Unix Bourne shell:
TMAKEPATH=/local/tmake/lib/linux-g++ PATH=$PATH:/local/tmake/bin export TMAKEPATH PATHUnix C shell:
setenv TMAKEPATH /local/tmake/lib/linux-g++ setenv PATH $PATH:/local/tmake/binMicrosoft Windows:
set TMAKEPATH=c:\tmake\lib\win32-msvc set PATH=%PATH%;c:\tmake\bin
Supported platforms: AIX, Data General, FreeBSD, HPUX, SGI Irix, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OSF1/DEC, SCO, Solaris, SunOS, Ultrix, Unixware, Cygwin, MinGW, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Embedded systems and processors including the arm, ipaq, sharp, cassiopeia, koala, mips, and qnx-rtp.
Supported build tools: make, nmake, Microsoft Visual Studio, KDevelop.
Unix users: tmake requires that perl is in /usr/bin. If your version of perl is elsewehere, either change the first line of tmake or make a small shell script which invokes tmake with the correct perl.
HEADERS = hello.h SOURCES = hello.cpp main.cppThen run tmake to create a Makefile:
tmake-<version>/bin/tmakeAnd finally:
makeThis builds the hello program.
See the generated Makefile for linux-g++.
See the generated Makefile for win32-msvc (Microsoft Visual Studio nmake).
Here are some other invocation examples:
perl tmake-<version>/bin/tmake -lib tmake-<version>/lib/linux-kcc tmake-<version>/bin/tmake -lib tmake-<version>/lib/win32-msvc -o hello.mak perl tmake-<version>/bin/tmake -lib win32-msdev CONFIG+=debug hello.pro
app.t | Creates a build file for compiling applications. | ||
lib.t | Creates a build file for compiling libraries. | ||
subdirs.t | Creates a build file for compiling targets in subdirectories. | ||
tmake.conf | This configuration file contains compiler options, tools, and libraries for a platform-compiler combination. |
The hello.pro project file above does not have a TEMPLATE
, CONFIG
, or
TARGET
variable. The default TEMPLATE
is app (the .t
extension is optional), the default CONFIG
is warn_on
release, and the TARGET
name defaults to the project (*.pro) filename.
This project file produces exactly the same result as the hello.pro
above:
TEMPLATE = app CONFIG = warn_on release HEADERS = hello.h SOURCES = hello.cpp main.cpp TARGET = hello
The CONFIG
variable specifies what compiler options to use and which extra
libraries to link in.
These options control the compilation flags:
release | Compile with optimization enabled, ignored if "debug" is specified. | ||
debug | Compile with debug options enabled. | ||
warn_on | The compiler should emit more warnings than normally, ignored if "warn_off" is specified. | ||
warn_off | The compiler should emit no warnings or as few as possible. |
These options defines the application/library type:
qt | The target is a Qt application/library and requires Qt header files/library. | ||
opengl | The target requires the OpenGL (or Mesa) headers/libraries. | ||
thread | The target is a multi-threaded application or library. | ||
x11 | The target is a X11 application or library. | ||
windows | The target is a Win32 window application (app.t only). | ||
console | The target is a Win32 console application (app.t only). | ||
dll | The target is a shared object/DLL. | ||
staticlib | The target is a static library (lib.t only). |
As an example, if the hello application uses both Qt and OpenGL and you
want to compile it for debugging, your CONFIG
line should
read:
CONFIG = qt opengl debug
The most common tmake options and project variables are described here. See the tmake reference manual for details.
HEADERS | Header files. | ||
SOURCES | Source files. | ||
TARGET | Name of executable (adds .exe if on Windows). | ||
DESTDIR | Where to put the target. | ||
DEFINES | Tell compiler to define C preprocessor macros (-D option). | ||
INCLUDEPATH | Sets the include file search path for the compiler (-I option). | ||
DEPENDPATH | Sets the dependency search path for tmake. | ||
DEF_FILE | Win32 only: Link with a .def file. | ||
RC_FILE | Win32 only: Use a .rc file (compile to temporary .res). | ||
RES_FILE | Win32 only: Link with a .res file. |
The lib.t template supports the same project variables as app.t, but also
VERSION
. VERSION
is the version number of the
target library, e.g. 1.40. The version is important for shared libraries.
The SUBDIRS
variable contains the name of all subdirectories to
be processed. If this is the base *.pro file when tmake is invoked, tmake will
automatically generate build files for all project files found withing SUBDIRS.
HEADERS = gui.h xml.h url.hIf you cannot fit everything on one line, use '\' to split it up:
HEADERS = gui.h \ xml.h \ url.h
Project variables contains lists of items (such as header files, compiler options etc.) and use whitespace to separate the items. This means that tmake cannot deal with items containing whitespace. The INCLUDEPATH variable is an exception. If INCLUDEPATH contains one or more semicolons (;), tmake uses the semicolon to separate the include directories, hence you can have include directories containing whitespace (this is quite common on Windows).
Here is an example:
INCLUDEPATH = C:\Program Files\DBLib\Include;C:\qt\include
tmake supports project variable expension. Use $$ to expand any project variable:
ALLFILES = $$HEADERS $$SOURCES
Most often you assign some value to a project variable, but you can also add to, remove from or replace parts of a project variable.
A = abc X = xyz A += def # A = abc def X *= xyz # X = xyz B = $$A # B = abc def B -= abc # B = def X /= s/y/Y/ # X = xYzThe *= operation adds the value if the variable does not already contain it. The /= operation performs regular expression substitution.
You can also set variables from the command line when running the tmake program. For instance, if you want to generate a makefile with debug information:
tmake "CONFIG+=debug" hello.pro
Use the unix: or win32: (conditional) qualifier if you want a platform-specific variable:
SOURCES = common.cpp # common for all platforms unix:SOURCES += unix.cpp # additional sources for Unix win32:SOURCES += win32.cpp # additional sources for Windows unix:LIBS += -lm # on Unix we need the math libIf none of the platforms match, tmake looks for the variable in CONFIG variable:
debug:SOURCES += dbgstuff.cpp # additional source for debuggingFinally, you can set platform and compiler-dependent variables:
linux-g++:TMAKE_CFLAGS = -fno-rtti
You may define your own project variables to be used by custom templates. A
project variable is stored in %project
, which is an associative
Perl array. Access it like this: $project{"var"}
or via the
function Project("var")
. For example, after reading
"hello.pro", $project{"SOURCES"}
contains "hello.cpp
main.cpp".
tmake [options] project files or project settingsOptions:
-e[xpr] Evaluate the Perl expression. Ignores the template file. -n[odepend] Don't generate dependency information. -o[utput] file Force output to file. Disables recursion. -t[emplate] type Force using template type {app, lib, subdir}. -v[erbose] Verbose/debugging on. -r[ecurse] Enable recursion even when -o[utput] is specified. -l[ib] Force library to specific platform-compiler. -type Force output to specific type {make, nmake, ...}. -unix Force tmake into Unix mode. -win32 Force tmake into Win32 mode.The -t option overrides any
TEMPLATE
variable in the project file.
The default project file extension is ".pro". The default template file extension is ".t". If you do not specify these extension tmake will automatically add them for you.
Example of basic use, assuming tmake-<version>/bin has been added to the path:
tmake
Example of how to create a Makefile with debugging information:
tmake hello.pro "CONFIG+=debug"
Example of how to specify a TMAKEPATH:
tmake -l /local/tmake/lib/hpux-g++ hello.pro -o Makefile.makExample of how to evaluate a perl expression (print names of headers and source files):
tmake hello -e 'Expand("HEADERS","SOURCES")'Note that project settings on the command line must come after the project file, otherwise they will be overridden by the settings in the project file.
progen -n hello -o hello.proIf no .cpp or .h files are specified on the command line, progen searches for .cpp and .h (except moc_*.cpp) in the current directory and below.
Usage:
progen [options] [C/C++ header files and source files]Options:
-lower Lower-case letters in filenames (useful on Windows).
-n name Specify a project name (TARGET
).
-o file Write output to file instead of stdout.
-t file Specify a template file.
solaris-cc:TMAKE_CC = /opt/bin/CC_5.0 solaris-cc:TMAKE_CFLAGS = -pts unix:TMAKE_LIBS = -lXext win32:INCLUDEPATH = c:\myinclude win32-borland:DEFINES = NO_BOOLYou can prefix a project variable with unix: or win32: to make it specific for either Unix or Windows. You can also prefix a variable with platform-compiler
HEADERS
, SOURCES
etc.
All variables and values are stored in a global associative Perl hash
array called project
. For example,
$project{"SOURCES"}
contains "hello.cpp main.cpp"
after processing hello.pro.
When both the tmake.conf and the project files have been
read, tmake starts reading the template file line by line and
executes any Perl code it finds in the template.
#$
until newline is
evaluated as perl code. The perl code is substituted
with the contents of the $text
variable.
#${
until
#$}
.
#!
until newline is stripped.
Example:
#! This is a comment which will be removed. This text will appear in the output. #$ $text = "The header file(s) are: " . $project{"HEADERS"}; # This text also appears in the output. #${ $a = 12; $b = 13; $text = $a * $b; #$} That's all.Output:
This text will appear in the output. The header file(s) are: hello.h # This text also appears in the output. 156 That's all.
Parser template:
#! #! parser.t: This is a custom template for building a parser #! #$ IncludeTemplate("app.t"); ####### Lex/yacc programs and options LEX = flex YACC = #$ $text = ($is_unix ? "yacc -d" : "byacc -d"); ####### Lex/yacc files LEXIN = #$ Expand("LEXINPUT"); LEXOUT = lex.yy.c YACCIN = #$ Expand("YACCINPUT"); YACCOUT = y.tab.c YACCHDR = y.tab.h PARSER = #$ Expand("PARSER"); ####### Process lex/yacc files $(LEXOUT): $(LEXIN) $(LEX) $(LEXIN) $(PARSER): $(YACCIN) $(LEXOUT) $(YACC) $(YACCIN) #$ $text = ($is_unix ? "-rm -f " : "-del ") . '$(PARSER)'; #$ $text = ($is_unix ? "-mv " : "-ren ") . '$(YACCOUT) $(PARSER)';The parser template adds some extra rules to the application template in order to build the lex and yacc portions of the project. This template is portable across Unix and Windows since it generates different commands depending on the
$is_unix
variable.
To learn more about the Expand() function and other Perl functions which tmake provides, consult the reference manual.
Example project file:
TEMPLATE = parser.t CONFIG = console release LEXINPUT = lexer.l YACCINPUT = grammar.y PARSER = parser.cpp SOURCES = $$PARSER \ node.cpp \ asmgen.cpp TARGET = parserHere we use macro expansion
$$PARSER
to avoid writing parser.cpp
two places.
Template wc.t:
#! Template that count number of C++ lines. The number of C++ code lines for #$ $text=$project_name; #${ $files = $project{"HEADERS"} . " " . $project{"SOURCES"}; $text = `wc -l $files`; #$}Run it:
tmake -t wc helloOutput:
The number of C++ code lines for hello.pro 25 hello.h 98 hello.cpp 38 main.cpp 161 totalThis will only work if the wc program is installed on your system.