How to generate a Makefile with source in sub-directories using just one makefile

The reason is that your rule

%.o: %.cpp
       ...

expects the .cpp file to reside in the same directory as the .o your building. Since test.exe in your case depends on build/widgets/apple.o (etc), make is expecting apple.cpp to be build/widgets/apple.cpp.

You can use VPATH to resolve this:

VPATH = src/widgets

BUILDDIR = build/widgets

$(BUILDDIR)/%.o: %.cpp
      ...

When attempting to build “build/widgets/apple.o”, make will search for apple.cpp in VPATH. Note that the build rule has to use special variables in order to access the actual filename make finds:

$(BUILDDIR)/%.o: %.cpp
        $(CC) $< -o $@

Where “$<” expands to the path where make located the first dependency.

Also note that this will build all the .o files in build/widgets. If you want to build the binaries in different directories, you can do something like

build/widgets/%.o: %.cpp
        ....

build/ui/%.o: %.cpp
        ....

build/tests/%.o: %.cpp
        ....

I would recommend that you use “canned command sequences” in order to avoid repeating the actual compiler build rule:

define cc-command
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $< -o $@
endef

You can then have multiple rules like this:

build1/foo.o build1/bar.o: %.o: %.cpp
    $(cc-command)

build2/frotz.o build2/fie.o: %.o: %.cpp
    $(cc-command)