Re: Defining new targets with eval during secondary expansion?

[LeJacq, Jean Pierre]

Ismail Badawi wrote:

> I'm trying to define new targets with eval during secondary expansion, but
> apparently this is not allowed -- with make 4.2.1 I get an error like
> this:
> 
>   Makefile:94: *** prerequisites cannot be defined in recipes.  Stop.
> 
> I found bugs #24588 and #24622 related to this.
> 
> My use case is as follows. I have a bunch of targets which can be nested
> arbitrarily deeply in subdirectories within my build directory. For each
> target, I'd like to have an order-only prerequisite on the existence of
> its parent directory. So something like this:
> 
>   build/foo/bar/baz/mytarget: | build/foo/bar/baz
>   touch $@
> 
>   build/foo/bar/baz:
>   mkdir -p $@
> 
> The issue is that if I have many targets in many different directories,
> then I
> need to write lots of 'mkdir' rules like this. I can save some typing with
> a template and a foreach/eval/call, but that's still a bit awkward because
> I have
> to maintain a list of all the directories I need.

I don't have a solution to your general problem but for your specific 
requirement of creating directories this is what I do:

1. All directories must end in the '/' character.

2. Use secondary expansion to determine the target directory. Note trailing 
'/'.

   build/foo/bar/baz/mytarget: | $$(@D))/
        touch '$(@)'

3. Define pattern rule for directories.

   $(build_dir)%/ :
            mkdir -p '$(@)'

4. You may need to mark the pattern as precious

   .PRECIOUS : $(build_dir)%/

Works well for me for 4.1 and later. No need to list directories. Only one 
rule required.

-- 
JP