Make/Makefile-Names
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3.2 What Name to Give Your Makefile
By default, when make
looks for the makefile, it tries the
following names, in order: GNUmakefile
, makefile
and Makefile
.
Normally you should call your makefile either makefile
or
Makefile
. (We recommend Makefile
because it appears
prominently near the beginning of a directory listing, right near other
important files such as README
.) The first name checked,
GNUmakefile
, is not recommended for most makefiles. You should
use this name if you have a makefile that is specific to GNU
make
, and will not be understood by other versions of
make
. Other make
programs look for makefile
and
Makefile
, but not GNUmakefile
.
If make
finds none of these names, it does not use any makefile.
Then you must specify a goal with a command argument, and make
will attempt to figure out how to remake it using only its built-in
implicit rules. See Using Implicit Rules.
If you want to use a nonstandard name for your makefile, you can specify
the makefile name with the ‘-f
’ or ‘--file
’ option. The
arguments ‘-f name
’ or ‘--file=name
’ tell
make
to read the file name
as the makefile. If you use
more than one ‘-f
’ or ‘--file
’ option, you can specify several
makefiles. All the makefiles are effectively concatenated in the order
specified. The default makefile names GNUmakefile
,
makefile
and Makefile
are not checked automatically if you
specify ‘-f
’ or ‘--file
’.
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