Re: fatal errors for missing include files.

[Noel Yap]

If you don't want the include to be an error, use -include.  For example:

-include foo.mk

Of course, if GNU make isn't able to build foo.mk for any reason, it's still 
not an error.

HTH,
Noel

Ian Dunbar wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am not totally sure if this is a bug or not. Make's non-fatal warnings
> about missing include files seem to become fatal errors when you include
> another file from the "includee". I have reduced it to an example as
> follows:
> 
> ~> cat > Makefile
> default:
> 
> %.mk: %.prj
>  cp $< $@
> 
> include sub.mk
> 
> ~> cat > sub.prj
> include subsub.mk
> 
> ~> cat > subsub.prj
> # empty
> 
> ~> make
> Makefile:6: sub.mk: No such file or directory
> cp sub.prj sub.mk
> sub.mk:1: subsub.mk: No such file or directory
> cp subsub.prj subsub.mk
> make: Nothing to be done for `default'.
> 
> So far so good, the behaviour is as I would expect. I checked the database,
> and your Bug#102 talks about those warning messages there, but while they
> are a bit ugly, and it would be nice if make didn't use the file it knows is
> out of date, they are not so big a deal.
> 
> Now, I want to remove subsub from the project, so I do this:
> 
> ~> rm subsub.*
> ~> cat > sub.prj
> # empty
> 
> ~> make
> sub.mk:1: subsub.mk: No such file or directory
> make: *** No rule to make target `subsub.mk'.  Stop.
> 
> It gives a fatal error. I was going to say that this appears to be contrary
> to what the documentation says is the correct behaviour:
> 
> "3.3 Including Other Makefiles ... If an included makefile cannot be found
> in any of these directories, a warning message is generated, but it is not
> an immediately fatal error; processing of the makefile containing the
> include continues. Once it has finished reading makefiles, make will try to
> remake any that are out of date or don't exist. ..."
> 
> Actually though on second thought, maybe it doesn't contradict that
> statement. Has it passed the "no fatal errors" stage, and is now trying to
> generate all the submakefiles as required by the last part of the statement
> "... make will try to remake any that are out of date or don't exist"?
> 
> Putting an order-only prerequisite into the original sub.prj will solve it
> if you rebuild everything.. I am not overly fond of this solution though
> becasue it is one more thing to maintain for each project. Still, it does
> work.
> ~> cat > sub.prj
> subsub.mk: | sub.mk
> include subsub.mk
> 
> I don't know how I would have gotten around it before order only targets
> were introduced, so I am still inclinded to think it's a bug. In general,
> making the lowest file first seems like unusual behavour. Shouldn't make
> know that it should regenerate included files from the top down? It seems
> like it is implied by the functionality of the include keyword. Otherwise it
> could end up re-generating a lot of unneeded include files. Or is this
> intended behaviour? (why?)
> 
> Best regards,
> Ian
> 
> 
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