Makefile to compile multiple C programs?

Question

This is an incredibly simple question, but I'm new to makefiles. I am trying to make a makefile that will compile two independent programs:

program1:     gcc -o prog1 program1.c  program2:     gcc -o prog2 program2.c 

All the examples online go into way more details than I need and are confusing! All I really want it to do is to run the two gcc lines. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Do it like so

all: program1 program2  program1: program1.c     gcc -o program1 program1.c  program2: program2.c     gcc -o program2 program2.c 

You said you don't want advanced stuff, but you could also shorten it like this based on some default rules.

all: program1 program2  program1: program1.c program2: program2.c 

Answer 2

Pattern rules let you compile multiple c files which require the same compilation commands using make as follows:

objects = program1 program2 all: $(objects)  $(objects): %: %.c         $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $@ $<