autoconfiscation -- questions about make usage

[Zack Weinberg]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 02:06:19PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, mike stump wrote:
> > If you don't know this stuff stone cold...  It will make working on
> > this harder.
> > 
> > Kinda like writing portable code, but not knowing what portable code
> > is.  It is relatively hard for us to just say.
> > 
> > One pragmatic way, is to only use constructs that you see in the
> > existing makefiles.
> 
> Yup.  Well, the existing makefiles are not SUS compliant, but are pretty
> close.  (They use dashes and .PHONY.)  So I'll try to stick to SUS +
> dashes + .PHONY.  

But notice that wherever you see .PHONY, there's either a "force"
dependency, or we don't think it's worth worrying about someone
creating a file with that name.  In other words, the makefile needs to
work even if .PHONY is being ignored.

(Just one of the things Mike is referring to when he says you need to
know this stuff subconsciously...)

zw