A makefile is probably the most common way to build software on all kinds of platforms. A makefile contains a list or rules describing which commands have to be run in order to generate a target from a list of dependencies. When building a program, the target is an object file and the dependencies are the source files. The target of one rule can be a dependency of another one, allowing several rules to be chained in order to make a final target.
It is a low-level, general tool, making it difficult to find all source files and targets of a project. So Anjuta has limited support for makefiles, reading only one makefile in the top project directory and extracting source files and targets.
If the project backend is not able to find all the source files, you can try to use the directory backend instead. It does not recognize any targets but should get all source files.
Changing properties, or adding or removing targets and source files are disabled with this backend, as automatically editing the makefile is not implemented. It has to be changed by hand using the text editor. When the makefile is saved, it is automatically reloaded though.
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