Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!AI.MIT.EDU!dead!schorr
From: dead!schorr@AI.MIT.EDU (Andrew J. Schorr)
Newsgroups: gnu.utils.bug
Subject: Force targets in version 3.55 of Gnu make
Message-ID: <8910062005.AA04510@dead.dead>
Date: 6 Oct 89 20:05:12 GMT
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Distribution: gnu
Organization: GNUs Not Usenet
Lines: 31

Roland,
   I am having a problem with force targets.  It appears that they work
only if the target name does not match that of an existing file.
I am using version 3.55 of Gnu make on an IBM RT PC running
version 2.2.1 of AIX.

Example:
Directory z contains the following Makefile, and nothing else:

   clean: FORCE
	   echo "Cleaning..."

   FORCE:

If I type make clean, I get the following response:
   echo "Cleaning..."
   Cleaning...

Now I type "touch clean"; I expect this to have no effect on the behavior.
I again run make clean, and I see the following:
   make: `clean' is up to date.
The RT's bundled version of make does give the desired behavior.

Note that if I use the .PHONY special target, I get the desired behavior.
Also, surprisingly enough, simply omitting the FORCE dependency also gives me
the desired result (I would expect this case to give the behavior that I
actually observed when I used the FORCE dependency).  This also contradicts
the behavior of the RT's bundled make.

Thanks for your help,
Andrew Schorr <dead!schorr@wheaties.ai.mit.edu>