19.2 Automatically Creating a List of Directories

In most makefiles, you will have to specify a list of directories, and store it in a variable. For small projects, it is often easier to specify each of them by hand, since you then have full control over what is the proper order for these directories, which ones should be included.

However, in larger projects, which might involve hundreds of subdirectories, it might be more convenient to generate this list automatically.

The example below presents two methods. The first one, although less general, gives you more control over the list. It involves wildcard characters, that are automatically expanded by make. Its shortcoming is that you need to explicitly specify some of the organization of your project, such as for instance the directory tree depth, whether some directories are found in a separate tree, ...

The second method is the most general one. It requires an external program, called find, which is standard on all Unix systems. All the directories found under a given root directory will be added to the list.

     # The examples below are based on the following directory hierarchy:
     # All the directories can contain any number of files
     # ROOT_DIRECTORY ->  a  ->  aa  ->  aaa
     #                       ->  ab
     #                       ->  ac
     #                ->  b  ->  ba  ->  baa
     #                       ->  bb
     #                       ->  bc
     # This Makefile creates a variable called DIRS, that can be reused any time
     # you need this list (see the other examples in this section)
     
     # The root of your project's directory hierarchy
     ROOT_DIRECTORY=.
     
     ####
     # First method: specify explicitly the list of directories
     # This allows you to specify any subset of all the directories you need.
     ####
     
     DIRS := a/aa/ a/ab/ b/ba/
     
     ####
     # Second method: use wildcards
     # Note that the argument(s) to wildcard below should end with a '/'.
     # Since wildcards also return file names, we have to filter them out
     # to avoid duplicate directory names.
     # We thus use make's dir and sort functions.
     # It sets DIRs to the following value (note that the directories aaa and baa
     # are not given, unless you change the arguments to wildcard).
     # DIRS= ./a/a/ ./b/ ./a/aa/ ./a/ab/ ./a/ac/ ./b/ba/ ./b/bb/ ./b/bc/
     ####
     
     DIRS := ${sort ${dir ${wildcard ${ROOT_DIRECTORY}/*/
                         ${ROOT_DIRECTORY}/*/*/}}}
     
     ####
     # Third method: use an external program
     # This command is much faster if run on local disks, avoiding NFS slowdowns.
     # This is the most complete command: it sets DIRs to the following value:
     # DIRS= ./a ./a/aa ./a/aa/aaa ./a/ab ./a/ac ./b ./b/ba ./b/ba/baa ./b/bb ./b/bc
     ####
     
     DIRS := ${shell find ${ROOT_DIRECTORY} -type d -print}