[bug #16118] Change of behavior in beta[34] for -include

[Paul D. Smith]

Update of bug #16118 (project make):

                  Status:                    None => Not A Bug              
             Open/Closed:                    Open => Closed                 

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Follow-up Comment #1:

As best as I can tell this change was made intentionally.  The GNU make
manual says:

   If you want `make' to simply ignore a makefile which does not exist and
cannot be remade, with no error message, use the `-include' directive instead
of `include'

The behavior of the previous versions of make did not match this description,
since make would fail if it could not remake an included makefile.

If you want make to fail when a makefile can't be rebuilt, then you should
use "include" instead of "-include".  A few other points: be careful to write
your .d creation script so that if the .c file does not exist it will either
fail or at least it won't create an empty .d file.  If you use -include then
make will ignore it when it fails but at least you won't incorrectly hide the
problem.  I suppose another option is to generate a .d file with a syntax
error in it, then when make re-execs it will fail.  But this is a problem
because you'll have to delete the broken .d file by hand before make will
work again.

Also, one would assume that the non-existent .c file would cause a failure of
some kind during the "normal" build portion of the makefile (not building .d
files) so I don't see how this kind of error can go unnoticed for long.

I'm closing this as "Not a Bug" for now; please feel free to add more
information about your situation and we can continue to discuss it.

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