Re: Bug with intermediate files?

[Paul Smith]

On Mon, 2010-11-08 at 09:21 +0330, ali hagigat wrote:
> .INTERMEDIATE does not work correctly:
> 
> The following makefile is run with:
> root> make my.all
> Why the file, my.gch is created (it is not removed!) while it is an
> intermediate file?
> 
> .INTERMEDIATE: my.gch
> %.all: %.gch
>        @echo hhhhhhhhhh
> %.gch:
>        @echo kkkkkkkk
>        @touch $@

Please choose just one mailing list.

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that GNU make is not working
correctly, although I do agree that this behavior is a gray area and not
well-described by the manual.

For GNU make, a target that has no prerequisites is out of date if and
only if the target does not exist.  An intermediate file is a target
that is a link between two other targets, where if the first is newer
than the last, the middle does not need to be built.

What does that mean for this case where there is no "last" target?
Obviously make will not consider that file to be intermediate on its
own, but can a file with no prerequisites be treated as intermediate if
you explicitly declare it to be so?

The answer, based on GNU make's behavior, appears to be no it can't.

-- 
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