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From: sja@tekla.fi (Sakari Jalovaara)
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Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 12:43:58 +0200
Message-Id: <9703041043.AA21471@poveri.tekla.fi>
To: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: 2.2-GAMMA - gdb.1
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
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In a thread in current@freebsd.org:
>>>> make: don't know how to make gdb.1. Stop
>>>> *** Error code 2
>>>
>>> Have you removed you stale .depend files?
>
> ...Maybe this confused the make system...

Old .depend files seem to cause problems from time to time.

Would it be possible to make "make" print out _why_ it wants
to make a given file?  The above error message would tell you
"I want to make gdb.1 because /usr/obj/contrib/gnu/gdb/.depend
tells me to".

"make" would need to backtrack and print out its dependency tree
when an error occurs.  Maybe something like

make: don't know how to make foo.y.
	"foo.y" is needed to make "y.tab.c"
		(rule in /usr/share/mk/make-rules line 10)
	"y.tab.c" is needed to make "y.tab.o"
		(rule in /usr/obj/bin/frobozz/.depend line 2)
	"y.tab.o" is needed to make "frobozz"
		(rule in /usr/src/bin/frobozz/Makefile line 10)
	"frobozz" is needed to make "all"
		(rule in /usr/src/bin/frobozz/Makefile line 7)

I tried looking at the "make" sources but couldn't quite figure out
how the dependency tree structure works...  Any "make" hackers out
there?  Would this even be *possible*?
									++sja