Re: Infinite loop bug with parallel make

[Paul Smith]

On Sat, 2013-02-23 at 21:02 +0000, Ian Lynagh wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 03:45:59PM -0500, Paul Smith wrote:
> > 
> > I've never really been clear on the purpose and use of .SECONDARY; the
> > comments in both the GNU make manual and in the code seem odd to me.  I
> > would really appreciate anyone out there who is using this (either for
> > specific targets or all by itself as in this example) to explain why
> > they use it / what they need it for.
> 
> When I use .SECONDARY:, what I really want to say is "don't delete any
> files you make".

Hm.

I'm getting this very deja vu feeling when I consider the .PRECIOUS,
.INTERMEDIATE, and .SECONDARY special targets.  I think these targets
all overlap in weird ways that yield unexpected behavior and don't let
people specify exactly what they really want, and I'm pretty sure this
issue has come up before.

I'd still like to know if anyone uses .SECONDARY for some OTHER purpose,
than keeping intermediate files from being deleted.  Speak up if you're
out there.