Re: is "force" a keyword in prerequisites

[Sam Ravnborg]

On Mon, Jul 05, 2010 at 10:07:36AM +0800, Jiongliang Zhang wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I found this format in GNUmakefile:
> 
> mytarget : force
>         command
> 
> but I can't find force as target or something else. it just appeared
> in the prerequisites.
> Can you tell me what's the force mean in here.

"force" is a shorthand to say: always execute this command.
In the above code-snippet you left out a few things.
It usually looks like this:

mytarget: prerequisite(s) force
        command

.PHONY: force


So if any of the prerequisite(s) are in the 
dependency chain then make will also try to update
mytarget due to the dependency on "force".

        Sam