GNU Make is a standard tool
to define transformation rules. Each rule consists of a (list of)
targets which may depend on one or more source files, and optionally a
script that needs to be executed to create the target. A
Makefile is essentially a collection of such rules.
Make figures out automatically which files it needs to update, based on which source files have changed. … As a result, if you change a few source files and then run Make, it does not need to [redo all the work]. It updates only those non-source files that depend directly or indirectly on the source files that you changed.
Make is readily available on all major platforms, also on Microsoft
Windows. The MakefileR package helps creating
Makefile files programmatically from R. The following
sections show a few examples and the corresponding output.
make_group(make_comment("Definitions")) +
make_def("R_VERSION", R.version.string) +
make_def("R_PLATFORM", R.version$platform)makefile() +
make_group(
make_comment("Definitions"),
make_def("R_VERSION", R.version.string)
) +
make_group(
make_comment("Universal rule"),
make_rule("all", c("first_target", "second_target"))
) +
make_group(
make_comment("Special rule"),
make_rule(".FORCE")
) +
make_comment(c("============", "Action rules", "============")) +
make_rule("first_target", ".FORCE", "echo 'Building first target'") +
make_rule("second_target", "first_target",
c("echo 'Building second target'", "echo 'Done'"))# Generated by MakefileR, do not edit by hand # Definitions R_VERSION=R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14) # Universal rule all: first_target second_target # Special rule .FORCE: # ============ # Action rules # ============ first_target: .FORCE ⇥ echo 'Building first target' second_target: first_target ⇥ echo 'Building second target' ⇥ echo 'Done'