Re: SUFFIXES bug

[Patrick Craig]

"Paul D. Smith" wrote:

> This doesn't have anything to do with suffixes; you could get the same
> behavior in other ways.
>
> The issue is GNU make's directory cache feature.
>
> When GNU make first needs to find a file in a directory it caches the
> contents internally.  Then as it runs rules which create new files, it
> adds them to its cache.  This allows a significant performance
> improvement.
>
> The problem is that, if you create files as a side-effect of a rule and
> make doesn't know about it, then make can't know to add that new file to
> the cache, so it can't be found later even though it actually exists on
> the disk.

Thanks for your reply. After sending my email I read your
"problem with $(wildcard,,,)" reply in the archives. I suppose
I should have checked the archives first really ;-)

I can understand using the directory caching feature to improve
performance, but it seems that this feature does cause users some
problems. Couldn't you modify make so that when such an error
occurs, instead of failing immediately, it rereads the directory
and tries again?

Patrick