Given a dependency list of the components, how do you find the correct build order in MakeFile

This problem can be mapped to the Topological sorting of vertices in a graph  assuming each component as the vertice in the graph and edge as the dependency indicator.For more details see the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting
Unix have tsort program for doing the same.
For a DAG(directed acyclic graph) tsort produces a listing of the vertices so that for all edges 'a->b', 'a' comes before 'b' in the listing. This is used in MakeFile for identifying the build order of the components in a way to fulfill dependencies. This will not work when the graph have cycles. (Cyclic dependencies are not taken care).
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsort_%28Unix%29