Minor bug

[Alain Ketterlin]

Hi,

I've just noticed that a `command' line starting with a single tab,
followed by nothing else, makes `make' pretend that the target is up
to date. For example:

file.out: file.in
          
# the preceding line has a single tab (probably changed by my mailer)

running make on this gives "make: `file.out' is up to date." even when
file.out doesn't exist at all. Not really wrong, since there's nothing
to do to build file.out, but misleading, IMHO.

Of course the makefile above is stupid, but the problem may happen in
more obscure cases. I found it in a case where the `command' part was
something like $(call CMD,...) and the variable CMD wasn't defined.

Well, ok, this is much more a bug of the user than one of make, but
still I would prefer a message like "make: Nothing to be done for
`file.out'." or "You're doing silly things".

Anyway, zillions of thanks for this excellent and most useful piece of
software.

-- Alain.