Max macOS Makefile
A Makefile for building Max externals on the command line.
Prerequisites
You will need Xcode installed.
Instructions
Get the Max SDK
Get a copy of the Max Software Development Kit and put it in Max's packages
folder. For example, drag the extracted max-sdk-8.0.3 folder into your Documents/Max 8/Packages folder.
Create directories for your external code
Next, create a personal directory for your code in the source folder in the Max SDK. The name is not important.
Inside that newly created directory, create a directory for each external, and copy the Makefile into each external
directory. For example:
Edit the Makefile for your external
If you only have a single .c file, just set the name of your external by editing the name variable, which is set in
the first line of the Makefile.
Build your external
Open a terminal and from inside the directory you created for your external (where the Makefile is located), run:
make
This will build the external. Now you need to put it somewhere where Max can find it. In the same directory, run:
make install
This will copy the external (which ends with a .mxo extension) into the externals directory at the top-level of
the Max SDK directory:
At this point you will need to quit and restart Max to pick up the new external.
Cleaning up and uninstalling your external
To delete all of the build artifacts from your external's source directory:
make clean
To delete the files that make install copied into the externals directory:
make uninstall
Limitations
Rigid directory structure
The Makefile depends on the directory structure above. Specifically, an individual external must be located in a
subdirectory (the mine directory in the image above) of the source directory of the main Max SDK directory.
Only works with a single source code file
You will have to edit the sources and objects variables in the Makefile if you want to use more than one source
code file.
Code signing
You may not be able to distribute compiled externals to other users due to code signing. See: