i have been developing iPhone apps for a few months now, i have gone through some examples of some iphone open source apps which have "makeFile" file in them. Just like cydia has got here Cydia Source Code
i googled for it but couldnt get any satisfactory explanation of it. All explanations are somewhat complex.
Can somebody please explain me in simple language what this makefile is?
In Xcode, you select "Build" from the menu and it compiles your project. A Makefile does the same thing, except from the command line. A Makefile contains information about which files need to be rebuilt if you change a certain file.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makefile
Makefiles are nice because they work on a very wide variety of systems.