18.3 Creating Makefiles Outside of MPLAB® X IDE

MPLAB® X IDE uses the GNU Make to build its projects. This section explains how to re-create the Makefiles for an MPLAB X IDE project outside of the IDE and how to customize Makefile behavior (modify what the Makefiles do, like change the processor or add extra options) without having to regenerate the file. The following topics describe how to run make on the Makefiles from the command line.

Note: The safest way to have the Makefiles match the values of the project in the IDE is to either regenerate them with the IDE itself or to use the 18.3.2 prjMakefilesGenerator utility, explained later. The IDE will recreate the Makefiles for the main configuration in a project when the project is open. However, you might benefit from some other customization steps which modify the Makefiles' behavior once the Makefiles are already created. The following topics explain those other steps.