Re: GNU make troubleshooting

[Paul Smith]

On Mon, 2023-07-10 at 21:05 +0200, Bruno Haible wrote:
> $ rm -f mbrtoc32.o
> $ make --trace mbrtoc32.o

If you remove the target then it should only say that it was rebuilt
because the target doesn't exist, regardless of how many other
prerequisite are out of date, because you can't even compute the out of
dateness usefully if there's no target to compare with:

  $ cat Makefile
  all: foo.x bar.x ; @echo hi; touch $@
  %.x: ; touch $@

  $ make
  touch foo.x
  touch bar.x
  hi

  $ make
  make: 'all' is up to date.

  $ rm all

  $ make --trace
  Makefile:1: update target 'all' due to: target does not exist
  echo hi; touch all
  hi

> I'm using GNU make 4.3.

Maybe a version difference.  I'm using 4.4.