I am a scientist who has semi-frequently written code in C (and other compiled languages like Fortran). When it comes time to compile, I typically tape together a Makefile from past projects and hope for the best, but even then I spend more time than I'd like to admit trying to figure out why my project is not being compiled or linked correctly. I've had a hard time finding any resources that aren't extremely surface level, or else are not behind some type of paywall. Can anyone recommend me some reading so that I can confidently write Makefiles and compile programs and actually understand what the different flags and commands are doing? I don't need extreme "under the hood" information as I don't intend to do things like write my own compiler, I just want to understand the process a little better. Help a scientist out!

If you have built from source, then you know the relief when nothing interesting comes out of ./configure && make && make install. In fact, the less interesting the output of these commands, the better.

But occasionally, the source build process is so horrifying that you end up having to modify the configure script or makefile yourself.

So far I have only been able to do this when I was lucky enough to find some poor, destitute stranger who had pretty much the same problem as me ( most recent I can think of is GNUTLS, where I had to adjust the version requirements for nettle ) and that is a problem -- there must be some way to learn this myself.

Is this just something that comes with time and experience, or does anyone have a reliable guide or resource for modifying makefiles and configure scripts? I would appreciate advice / discussion: I am tired of "getting lucky" with these!