[H-GEN] gnu make command-line target ordering problems?

[Byron Ellacott]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]

>   make clean dep all install
>it's at least bad form: depending on the makefile, make could well
>decide that it doesn't _need_ to delete files because it's going to
>rebuild them later.  However,

I would consider this *wildly* incorrect behaviour under any circumstances; 
regardless of what make *thinks* the "rm foo.o" command may do, I want make 
to execute the command, not make assumptions about not needing to execute 
it.  As you noted in a later post, using the -j flag could cause problems 
with the "clean" target removing files created by the build target, but 
since I don't use the -j flag (it often results in load blowout, especially 
on single processor systems) the behaviour of the above command is exactly 
what one expects.

I cannot see any way to get make itself to decide to remove a file, but I 
did only give the info pages a cursory glance.

As a side note, I agree with Ben on the counter intuitive nature of having 
those multiple targets executed in parallel.

--
bje

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