Re: Build: Try to convince `make' to keep intermediate files. (issue 5490077)

[David Kastrup]

Julien Rioux <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 2:42 AM,  <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Works with no problem on my (single-processor) Fedora system, for what
>> little that is worth.
>>
>> Could you point out which files are affected by .SECONDARY, Julien, so
>> users of the affected systems might test specifically to see if this
>> addresses their problem?
>
> One of the problem in addressing the various reports is precisely that
> there is not specifically a single file that you can test for. But
> generally if out.html is generated from out.texi which is generated
> from in.texi, then make would consider out.texi an intermediate file
> and would remove it. If it is specifically marked as a target of
> .SECONDARY or .PRECIOUS then make will not remove it.
>
>> The machine-generated parser.cc, for example, is not deleted by make
>> either with or without your patch.
>
> I think this is one of the files marked as .PRECIOUS

Why would it?  Precious files are files that are not removed even in
case of failure of the command creating them.

That's useful for things like log files.  Or files that are created from
an earlier version of themselves.

But for parser.cc, that's madness.  If the bison command fails, you
don't want a parser.cc to stay around that the compiler will consider up
to date at the next run.

-- 
David Kastrup