In message 1defaf580608281323n6ff6a04fh9369b68264374c1c@mail.gmail.com you wrote:
Anyway, I can make a new patch that assign the ELF, SREC and BIN explicitly. Would that be acceptable?
You're trying to tenderize me, aren't you? ;-) Yes, probably I'd give in.
be quite dangerous -- consider the following Makefile (NOTE: don't run it with files you care about in the same directory, including the Makefile itself):
all: hello_world.tgt
%.tgt: % cp $< $@
%: %.src cp $< $@
%.src: FORCE touch $@
.PHONY: FORCE FORCE:
When executing make, this is what happens (same result with make 3.80 and 3.81):
Yes, and IMHO you can easily show more problems with make. To me it's really frightening to see so many issues with a tool in so wide use like GNU make.
touch Makefile.src cp Makefile.src Makefile rm Makefile.src make: *** No targets. Stop.
OK. Let's give it a try:
-> cat Makefile all: hello_world.tgt
%.tgt: % cp $< $@
%: %.src cp $< $@
%.src: FORCE touch $@
.PHONY: FORCE FORCE: -> make -n touch Makefile.src cp Makefile.src Makefile rm Makefile.src make: *** No targets. Stop. -> ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 wd users 0 Aug 28 23:08 Makefile -rw-r--r-- 1 wd users 0 Aug 28 23:08 Makefile.src -> make --version GNU Make 3.80 ...
So yes, your Makefile is dangerous.
But wait. I used "-n" on the command line. And the man page says:
-n Print the commands that would be executed, but do not execute them.
Do not execute them? So who did execute the "touch" and the "cp", but skip the "rm"? I'm frightened.
Actually: where is the "rm" coming from?
Seriously: the make result must never depend on the order in which targets are given; and if there is a bug in the Makefile, I expect to see a (helpful) error message instand of random behaviour.
Yeah, but the jungle of internal implicit rules, remaking of Makefiles and such is not easy to understand. I for one don't.
Neither do I> I don't even understand simple command line options like "-n" :-(
I'll send a mail to the make mailinglist tomorrow to see if anyone can give an explanation.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk