Re: directory search fails!

[Paul Smith]

On Sun, 2010-09-26 at 14:29 +0200, grischka wrote:
> The question is basically:  How in the first place did the file get
> there into the VPATH directory?  It must have been manually generated.

Or generated by some other process, outside of this particular make
invocation, yes.

> And if so then why would anyone add a rule to a makefile to re-build
> the file in a place different from where it originally was, thus
> ending up with the original file as an obsolete duplicate sooner or
> later?

A common practice is to have a central repository of objects and/or
sources that are already built.  This can greatly reduce build times.

These days this model is not as useful since disk space and system
speeds have increased so dramatically that the savings are often not
worth it, except in more unusual situations.

When this capability was added, back in the early 1990's, it was more
widely used.

-- 
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