[news.eclipse.tools.cdt] Re: Questions about building existing project

[aegges@xxxxxx (Axel Mueller)]

Mike Feher wrote:

> Greetings,

> I ran across a couple of questions/observations today while importing a 
> project.  The project is enormous and consists of several top-level 
> directories all within one common directory, and each top-level directoy 
> has multiple nested dirs.  Buried deep inside the nested dirs are all of 
> the outputs, libraries, supporting files and most importantly, executables 
> for the program.

> This is all on a Linux system.

> To build, one simply goes to the top level directory (in an xterm) and 
> executes "make rc init bin" to do the whole thing.  There are layers and 
> layers of Makefiles buried in here, and they all must resolve to the 
> various executables.

> I noticed that when I created an Eclipse CDT project for this, it not only 
> successfully read in all the files and folders, but also seemed to be able 
> to pick up the top-level Makefile just by me telling it what the top-level 
> directory is and which make command to use (even though I can just invoke 
> "make", Eclipse CDT wanted /usr/bin/make, which on my system is aliased to 
> gmake).

> I guess my question/observation is, I don't have to tell it exactly which 
> top-level Makefile to build from, do I?

> Also, based on watching the output in the console, it looks like (from the 
> amount of text it output as well as the time it took), I assume the build 
> process essentially worked.

> My other question, based on a company Wiki page describing that I have to 
> "Add Make Targets", is, Do I really need to do this?  I am not going to 
> try and find potentially upwards of 100 executables and add them all 
> individually as make targets.  (I am basically trying to get Eclipse CDT 
> to recognize the huge pile of code and build it exactly the way I would do 
> it manually.)

> Comments?

> Mike
If you select "Build project" Eclipse just executes "make all" in the top 
level directory i.e. root folder of the project. You can change this 
behavior (name of make, targets, working dir etc.) in the project 
properties page (C/C++ Build). 
"Make Targets" are necessary if you have for e.g. 
root_folder/sub1/sub2/Makefile and you want to execute this specific 
makefile.
I hope this helps you.

 Axel