Makefile doesn't rebuild the obj's when the CFLAGS are modified?

Question

As we know that the binary depends on the obj's, and the obj's depends on the .c files ( assuming a C Project). Let's say, I have a env.mk file. This file has a flag like 'export NO_DISPLAY=YES'. In the main Makefile, I have the following.

ifeq ($(NO_DISPLAY),YES)
CFLAGS += -D__DISPLAY_DISABLE
endif

Obviously, env.mk is included in the main make file. whenever, I change the flag value 'NO_DISPLAY'. The makefile never rebuilts the executable again. However, the same works fine when the .o files are deleted. I understand that the reason behind it as it depends on the .c,.h files. The .c .h files are not modified, therefore makefile ignores to rebuild it. But, I would like makefile to rebuild the code if the CFLAGS value is changed. How can I do it? Please note, I don't want to delete the objs and rebuild it.

target_dbg: $(patsubst ./src/%.c,./obj_dbg/%.o,$(wildcard ./src/*.c)) 
    @echo "Target main rule__dbg $(NPROCS)"
    $(CC) $(patsubst ./src/%.c,./obj_dbg/%.o,$(wildcard ./src/*.c)) $(LIBS) -o gif_dbg 

./obj_dbg/%.o: ./src/%.c ./include/*.h 
    @echo "I am called first..dbg"
    @mkdir -p ./obj_dbg
    #$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -E $<
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) -DDEBUG -c $< -o $@

Any help will be appreciated.

tripleee tripleee · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-31T13:13:05

Make simply works by examining timestamps on files. You hardly want every build artefact to depend on your Makefile (at least not while actively developing it) but if you seriously want Make to handle this dependency, you could put the CFLAGS definition in a secondary file buildflags.mk, include it from the main Makefile, and make all object files depend on buildflags.mk.

I hardly think anybody would actually do this in practice, though. There will always be situations where the only way to be sure you get a clean build is to flush everything and start over. Make sure you have good and up-to-date realclean and/or distclean targets, and make sure you remember to use them when you make fundamental changes to your build infrastructure. Having a nightly build job (or similar) which starts the build from a completely clean slate -- e.g. by checking out a new copy into a temporary directory -- is also obviously a good idea.

Alternatively, or additionally, include a copy of the build flags as a static string in each object file, so you can verify them later, perhaps using a --help option or similar.

Makefile doesn't rebuild the obj's when the CFLAGS are modified?

2 Answers