Which files are necessary to be compiled?

[Sortie]

Suppose a project that has several files and assume the
preprocessor directives are not involved in the following.

Is it always enough to compile just the .c files that have
changed since the last full compile?

In which cases this is not enough?

 

[jameskuyper]

Assuming that your project consists of nothing but .c files, yes,
that's sufficient. But that isn't always the case.


One obvious example - you have written a .h file, and /that's/
changed. Then, any dependencies of that .h file need to be
recompiled.

Sortie said "assume the preprocessor directives are not involved in
the following". The wording and intent of that phrase is less than
perfectly clear, but it might be taken as implying, among other
things, that any #include preprocessor directives that might be
present should be assumed to refer to files (or standard headers)
which have not changed.

 

[Richard Bos]

There's something wrong with a project that has "several" files
and does not at the very least use #include to compile some of those
files as parts of others. But letting that pass for now ...


Yes, assuming you've used the same compiler and the same compile-
time option flags (or equivalent) throughout.

No, since if we're doing stupid things like assuming that "the
preprocessor directives are not involved", there is nothing to stop us
from calling our source files "something.cee" instead of "something.c".

Never underestimate the perversity of the undergrad lecturer asking
imbecilic questions.

Richard