Is there a way to exclude certain source files or folders from a makefile?

Question

Is there a way to exclude some files from the compilation process? Or even whole directories?

I believe the makefile is using find to find all the source files inside the src directory. Is there a way to specify the directories to ignore from find? Like some switch, or something?

Answer 1

Sure - do not specify them in your Makefile.

Answer 2

You can create separate targets that are the same except for what you want to exclude.

Answer 3

That depends entirely how your makefile is written. You can use conditionals to avoid adding files given certain conditions hold:

 ifeq ($(OS),win32)
 SOURCES += foo_win32.cpp
 else
 SOURCES += foo_posix.cpp
 endif
 ...
 foo: $(SOURCES)

If you elaborated a little on exactly you want to do, you may get a better answer.

EDIT: If the files are determined by running find, you can exclude files/directories from find like this:

SOURCES:=$(shell find srcdir -type f | grep -v dirtoexclude)

Answer 4

Makepp (a replacement for Make) can do this:

http://makepp.sourceforge.net/1.19/makepp_cookbook.html#Matching%20all%20files%20except%20a%20certain%20subset