Hi, I was having errors with my Makefiles (for Objective Caml), and I could pinpoint the problem with the attached very simple Makefile.
Basically (please see the attached Makefile), I use a: -include fake.depend statement to include a dependencies makefile 'fake.depend', but this included makefile does not exists and cannot be made. Indeed, fake.depend can be made from fake.c, but fake.c does not exist, and it isn't the target of any rule -- explicit or implicit). So I expected make to simply ignore fake.depend (as explained in GNU make's manual). However, it seems that make still wants to make fake.c, as fake.c is the prerequisite of another explicit rule (dummy-fake), even though this rule shouldn't be used at all in the make process. I believe that this is a bug, but if it isn't, then I guess the manual should be more precise on this subject. Thanks a lot, Gregoire Sutre. -- Grégoire Sutre Bureau 211 [EMAIL PROTECTED] LaBRI - CNRS UMR 5800 http://www.labri.fr/~sutre Domaine Universitaire Tel: +33 5 56 84 33 36 351, cours de la Libération Fax: +33 5 56 84 66 69 33405 Talence Cedex, FRANCE
# Strange GNU make behavior? # # Assume that: # - there is a file real.c in the directory, # - but there is no file fake.c in the directory # # Then make complains saying: # # make: *** No rule to make target `fake.c', needed by `fake.depend'. Stop. # # But if we remove fake.c from the prerequisites of target dummy-fake, then # everything works fine (fake.depend is ignored since we can't build it, # which is what we wanted). # # This is odd, since the rule "dummy-fake: fake.c" isn't used at all all: dummy-real dummy-real: real.c dummy-fake: fake.c %.depend : %.c touch $@ # Dependencies -include real.depend -include fake.depend
