How to learn to use make? I'm never ever able to build sources with make and makefiles

I'm new to NX OSes, actually MacOS, and when I try to build sources with make and makefiles, I never can.

I try to run make, even try to run it passing the makefile as an argument, but all I get is "There's nothing for make to 开发者_如何学Cdo"

Can you point me to a tutorial, reference, or something ?

This one is excellent.

(You can also read some criticism to round your knowledge.)

(If after reading these, you want to try cmake, then you want to go here. It works perfectly on Mac OS X.)

Generally if you're trying to install from a tarball there will be a file named README or INSTALL with installation instructions. Usually all you have to do is run from the terminal

./configure
make
sudo make install

It's generally possible to set options for compilation by adding flags to ./configure, to see what they are run

./configure --help

Here is a tutorial to help you get started.

Just remember to use tabs instead of spaces when indenting lines in the makefile :)