Re: Feature request: silently overriding existing rules

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 08/11/2012 07:36 AM, Tim Murphy wrote:
> This is a different thing but I'd have had great use for a way to tell if a
> target had been defined previously. Had to use variables to do it which
> used a lot of memory and it was a total waste because make has the
> information already.
>
I dimly remember that there had been talks about a $(.TARGETS) special
variable in the past, but for some reasons that had been problematic to
implement correctly, and the idea was (at least temporarily) dropped.

> Perhaps the ability to detect if a target is defined and another to remove
> it would offer a complete api.
>
But note that I'm just proposing to remove the *recipe* associated with a
target, not the target itself (nor the list of dependencies for it).  Not
that I oppose such an enhancement, but is distinct from what I need for my
use case (and might be more tricky to implement).

Regards,
  Stefano