Re: -n option not working under selected circumstances

[Paul Smith]

[[ Please keep the mailing list on the CC line... ]]

On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 18:56 +0100, gabriele balducci wrote:
> If I can take advantage of your patience: so, `make -n install' is not
> 100% safe? Well, actually, this is the first time I incurred in this
> problem in many years; yet... 

Whether it is safe or not depends on the whether that particular
makefile is written properly (with respect to this feature of GNU make).

Normally, when people create install rules they don't put references to
$(MAKE) in the same command line that also does other, side-effect
things like copy files around.  Instead they make sure that the $(MAKE)
reference is on its own line (as you see in your t3 example, make does
not run any line that doesn't contain $(MAKE)).

Regardless of whether the rule is "install", "clean", or anything else,
make always operates the same way (there's nothing special to make about
a target named "install"; that's just a convention that makefile writers
use).


Basically what I'm saying is this is a problem in the implementation of
the "install" rule(s) in the openssl makefile(s) and should be reported
to them.