%% Grégoire Sutre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: gs> I was having errors with my Makefiles (for Objective Caml), and I could gs> pinpoint the problem with the attached very simple Makefile.
gs> Basically (please see the attached Makefile), I use a: gs> -include fake.depend gs> statement to include a dependencies makefile 'fake.depend', but gs> this included makefile does not exists and cannot be made. gs> Indeed, fake.depend can be made from fake.c, but fake.c does not gs> exist, and it isn't the target of any rule -- explicit or gs> implicit). gs> So I expected make to simply ignore fake.depend (as explained in gs> GNU make's manual). Not quite. The manual says that if the makefile does not exist and cannot be remade, then it will be ignored. By "cannot be remade", the manual really means "make doesn't know of any way to remake it". Because make can imagine a way to recreate the included makefile, it tries to do so (this is a result of the auto-re-exec feature of GNU make; it has nothing to do with whether fake.c is a prerequisite or not). If the rebuild fails (in this case because there is no fake.c) then it stops with an error. It's not clear to me which is the correct behavior in this case, but make has always behaved as it does now. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Find some GNU make tips at: http://www.gnu.org http://make.paulandlesley.org "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make