Makefile - How to save the .o one directory up?

Question

Imagine the following folder structure:

• project
  • src
    • code.c
    • makefile
  • bin

How can I compile code.c to code.o and directly put it inside bin? I know I could compile it to code.o under src and the do "mv code.o ../bin" but that would yield an error if there were compile errors, right? Even if it works that way, is there a better way to do it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You could try moving, but only when the compilation was successful using &&:

code.o: code.c code.h
    g++ -c code.c && mv code.o ../

mv code.o ../ will only be executed if g++ returned 0, which is when the compilation was successful. This may not be suitable solution for you if you have very complicated makefile, but I thought I'd share what I know.

Answer 2

You can still use the move approach and survive compiler errors:

cc -c code.c && mv code.o ../bin

This won't run the "mv" part if the "cc" part fails.