Using G++ to compile multiple .cpp and .h files

Question

list all the other cpp files after main.cpp.

ie

g++ main.cpp other.cpp etc.cpp

and so on.

Or you can compile them all individually. You then link all the resulting ".o" files together.

To compile separately without linking you need to add -c option:

g++ -c myclass.cpp
g++ -c main.cpp
g++ myclass.o main.o
./a.out

Now that I've separated the classes to .h and .cpp files do I need to use a makefile or can I still use the "g++ main.cpp" command?

Compiling several files at once is a poor choice if you are going to put that into the Makefile.

Normally in a Makefile (for GNU/Make), it should suffice to write that:

# "all" is the name of the default target, running "make" without params would use it
all: executable1

# for C++, replace CC (c compiler) with CXX (c++ compiler) which is used as default linker
CC=$(CXX)

# tell which files should be used, .cpp -> .o make would do automatically
executable1: file1.o file2.o

That way make would be properly recompiling only what needs to be recompiled. One can also add few tweaks to generate the header file dependencies - so that make would also properly rebuild what's need to be rebuilt due to the header file changes.

I know this question has been asked years ago but still wanted to share how I usually compile multiple c++ files.

1. Let's say you have 5 cpp files, all you have to do is use the * instead of typing each cpp files name E.g g++ -c *.cpp -o myprogram.
2. This will generate "myprogram"
3. run the program ./myprogram

that's all!!

The reason I'm using * is that what if you have 30 cpp files would you type all of them? or just use the * sign and save time :)

p.s Use this method only if you don't care about makefile.

You can still use g++ directly if you want:

g++ f1.cpp f2.cpp main.cpp

where f1.cpp and f2.cpp are the files with the functions in them. For details of how to use make to do the build, see the excellent GNU make documentation.

.h files will nothing to do with compiling ... you only care about cpp files... so type g++ filename1.cpp filename2.cpp main.cpp -o myprogram

means you are compiling each cpp files and then linked them together into myprgram.

then run your program ./myprogram