Re: Finding Circular Dependencies

[Alexander Kriegisch]

Hi David!

This is an interesting question. I experimented a bit and tried to solve
a more general problem, too: visualising makefile dependencies. I found
a Perl module named Makefile::GraphViz and used it to build a bash
script + a little perl helper script and added it to an open source
project's SVN reopsitory. You might want to take a look at
http://www.freetz.org/wiki/visualise_makefile. The wiki page is in
German, but the scripts are in English and so is the main script's help
page. On the bottom of wiki page you find a few sample images.

I hope this helps, because the graphical representations of GNU Make's
dependency graphs help to relatively easily detect circular references, too.

Regards
--
Alexander Kriegisch
http://scrum-master.de


David A. Greene:
> Make is complaining about a circular dependency but I don't see it in my
> Makefile.  Is there any easy way to figure out where the problem is?  I
> find -d output to be a little overwhelming and not all that useful.
> 
> If I eliminate the dependency it complains about, make claims it doesn't
> know how to build the target of the dependency I eliminated.