How to cause `make` to autogenerate missing dependency file? - makefile

I've set up a makefile for GNU make 4.0 using Paul Smith's guide here. Everything seems to work except if a .d file is deleted, it isn't recreated with the next make all. According to the guide, if the autogenerated dependency file is listed as a dependency of the target, then make will recreate it if it's missing:
%.o : %.c $(DEPDIR)/%.d
$(COMPILE.c) $(OUTPUT_OPTION) $<
$(POSTCOMPILE)
Paul's explanation:
... $(DEPDIR)/%.d
Declare the generated dependency file as a
prerequisite of the target, so that if it’s missing the target will be
rebuilt.
This is not my experience. Deleting a .d file and re-issuing make all results in make deciding that everything is up to date. Forcing a recompile of the .c does of course recreate the dependency file, but aren't dependency files supposed to get rebuilt whenever they are missing?
Excerpts from my makefile (this is on an IBM i so it's not using GCC, but the MAKEDEP parameter causes the creation of a dependency file):
POSTCCOMPILE = mv -f $(DEPDIR)/$*.Td $(DEPDIR)/$*.d
%.MODULE: %.C
%.MODULE: %.C $(DEPDIR)/%.d
#system -v "crtcmod module($(OBJLIB)/$*) srcstmf('$<') MAKEDEP('$(DEPDIR)/$*.Td')"
#$(POSTCCOMPILE)
. . .
$(DEPDIR)/%.d: ;
.PRECIOUS: $(DEPDIR)/%.d
. . .
-include $(wildcard $(DEPDIR)/*.d)
Sticking with this method of generating dependency files, what needs to be done to have make recreate missing .d files (keeping in mind the possibility that not every C file has includes)?

Hm. It appears that a missing pattern prerequisite does not force the pattern target to rebuild. In other words, if make finds a pattern rule to build a prerequisite but that rule doesn't end up creating the prerequisite file, then the pattern target is not considered out of date. That's actually surprising to me, and not expected. I'm not sure if there's a documented justification of this or a use for it, or if it's just an oversight. If it's a bug it's been around for quite a while. I'd have to think about it more.
To solve your immediate problem you can change the pattern rule into an explicit rule and that will fix things. This is because if the prerequisite is built by an explicit rule which doesn't create the prerequisite file, it's still considered updated and the target is considered out of date.
For example if you have a variable say SRCS which contains a list of all the source files, then if you change these lines:
$(DEPDIR)/%.d : ;
.PRECIOUS: $(DEPDIR)/%.d
to this instead:
$(SRCS:%.C=$(DEPDIR)/%.d) : ;
it will all work as expected.
Or you can do the same type of thing if you have a list of objects instead: just modify the substitution appropriately.

Did you mean to have both these lines?
%.MODULE: %.C
%.MODULE: %.C $(DEPDIR)/%.d
I believe the second line should be sufficient, and the first line may be causing make to find a rule for building %.MODULE that doesn't require $(DEPDIR)/%.d.

Related

Is my understanding correct for the first rule of the makefile?

I'm learning make, and try to understand the following makefile from Prerequisite-Types
OBJDIR := objdir
OBJS := $(addprefix $(OBJDIR)/,foo.o bar.o baz.o)
$(OBJDIR)/%.o : %.c
$(COMPILE.c) $(OUTPUT_OPTION) $<
all: $(OBJS)
$(OBJS): | $(OBJDIR)
$(OBJDIR):
mkdir $(OBJDIR)
The first rule confuses me. It's to be firstly applied. Since $(OBJDIR) is not there, the last rule will be applied to mkdir objdir. Then, since there's nothing in the newly created directory, there's no stem.o, and correspondingly, no stem.c So the prerequisites and recipes seem to be meaningless.
The only thing that the first rule does is to make a directory, which seems to be unreal.
The first rule is a pattern rule, so it cannot be the default rule; it will not be the first applied unless you specify e.g. make thing.o.
The first rule might not do what you expect. The recipe is $(COMPILE.c) $(OUTPUT_OPTION) $<, but you don't assign a value to OUTPUT_OPTION in the makefile; unless you provide a value from outside (e.g. make thing.o OPTION_OUTPUT=...) this recipe has no special instructions about where to put the file it builds, it has never heard of objdir/, and will use the compiler's default which is probably the working directory.
The last rule will build objdir (if objdir does not already exist, and if Make invokes that rule). The command make objdir will work perfectly. If you try to build one of the object files listed in OBJS, Make will construct the directory (if the directory does not exit) -- not because it needs a place to put the file, but because $(OBJDIR) is a prerequisite of every member of $(OBJS), according to the third rule. It will not construct the directory if you try to build objdir/thing.o, because $(OBJDIR) is not a prerequisite of that target. You think Make should build it because it is obviously needed? Well, Make isn't that smart.
The first rule has a prerequisite pattern %.c, and the recipe looks for the source file in the working directory, not in any newly constructed subdirectory. If there is no such source file in the working directory, Make will not run that rule.
I don't really follow your logic.
The first rule in your makefile is this:
all: $(OBJS)
so the default goal for this makefile (if you don't specify one on the command line) is all.
all depends on all the .o files. All the .o files have an order-only dependency on the directory. So, first the directory is created, then the .o files are created, then all is done (there is no recipe here to create a program or library or anything out of those .o files).

makefile: dependency not build

The question was edited after MadScientist's answer. See history for the original makefile, but the problem stays the same.
I have a small makefile:
DEPFLAGS=-MD -Mo $(OUTDIR)/$*.Td
POSTCOMPILE=#mv -f $(OUTDIR)/$*.Td $(OUTDIR)/$*.d && touch $#
VPATH=../src
OUTDIR=../out
SOURCES:=$(notdir $(wildcard ../src/*.c))
OBJECTS:=$(SOURCES:%.c=$(OUTDIR)/%.o)
all: $(OBJECTS) $(OBJECTS:%.o=%.d)
$(OUTDIR)/%.o : %.c
$(OUTDIR)/%.o : %.c $(OUTDIR)/%.d
#$(CC) $(DEPFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
#$(POSTCOMPILE)
$(OUTDIR)/%.d : ;
.PRECIOUS: $(OUTDIR)/%.d
Directory structure looks like:
src
contains file.c
out
empty, after make: contains file.o and file.d
make
contains the makefile
When I call the makefile everything works fine and two files are generated: file.o and file.d
However, when I delete file.d nothing happens. I would expect that make finds a missing dependency for file.c and starts a rebuild. Why doesn't it happen?
Make version is 3.81 built for i386-pc-mingw32 under Windows 7.
Marking a file as .PRECIOUS does not remove all aspects of it's "intermediateness". All it does is prevent it from being deleted, but this feature of intermediate files is still in effect:
If an ordinary file b does not exist, and make considers a target that depends on b, it invariably creates b and then updates the target from b. But if b is an intermediate file, then make can leave well enough alone. It won’t bother updating b, or the ultimate target, unless some prerequisite of b is newer than that target or there is some other reason to update that target.
This is why your .d file is not recreated. In order for it to be recreated you need to ensure it's not an intermediate file. Fortunately this is trivial to do: you just need to mention the files explicitly somewhere as a target or prerequisite. You can do it like this:
all: $(OBJECTS) $(SOURCES:%.c=$(OUTDIR)/%.d)
Or if you prefer like this:
depends: $(SOURCES:%.c=$(OUTDIR)/%.d)
which would allow you to run make depends to update the dependency files, if you wanted to.
I'll just point out in passing that this method of managing dependencies is considered outdated. There's a better, more advanced way it can be done described here among other places.
(I'll be a horrific necromancer here, but I've ran into same problem, and found that actual issue isn't one mentioned in answer or comments here)
Dependency rule generated by compiler by default sports file name with ALL suffixes replaced by single suffix .o and path removed. Which doesn't match the pattern of rule in makefile.
For gcc 4.x and later correct options would be
$(OUTDIR)/%.o : %.c $(OUTDIR)/%.d
#$(CC) -MF $(OUTDIR)/$*.Td -MT $# -c $< -o $#
Mo flag no longer exist, you have to use only MF flag to specify dependency file name.MT flag allows to provide a literal line for target name.

Makefile dependency-iterating generic rule

I've been looking through makefile syntax manuals and haven't found anything that really helps the usage case I'm trying to enact here.
What I have is a list of source files with varying directories under a common directory, like so:
src/a.h
src/b.h
src/dir/c.h
src/dir/dir/d.h
and would like make to use these individually as a dependency for a rule that ultimately creates:
build/a.h
build/b.h
build/c.h
build/d.h
which then are used as dependencies individually for more rules.
What I have so far:
LIST := src/a.h src/b.h src/dir/c.h src/dir/d.h
all : $(addprefix build/,$(notdir ${LIST}))
#echo 'All rule invoked'
What doesn't work:
$(LIST) : build/$(notdir %).h : %.h
#echo 'dst $* dat $# din $<'
target 'item' doesn't match the target pattern
build/%.h: %.h
no rule to make target 'build/a.h' needed by 'all'.
I'm guessing make got mad at me at this point, as the errors started telling me to stop.
Basically, I am reading in a list of files with a path prefix that is relevant for the search path and dependency, and want to dump each individual one only when the source file is updated. After this, these files in that single directory are used as dependencies for another batch of rules. How can I accomplish this?
Note: I've gotten it done by ignoring the dependency chain, but that's not going to work. I can also use make to run scripts that generate an explicit makefile that can do it properly, but that feels like overkill and a waste of resources, and make ought to be able to create a rule that does that by itself, as powerful as it is. I just don't know how to create generic rules that focus on the dependency variable for its text matching, rather than the target.
There's no good way of using a pattern rule here, as all the headers are (potentially) in different directories and you want to move them out to a common directory. If you're using GNU make, you can write a macro rule that expands to all the rules you need:
define copy_header_rule
build/$(notdir $(1)): $(1)
cp $$< $$#
endef
$(foreach hdr,$(LIST),$(eval $(call copy_header_rule,$(hdr))))
This goes through each of the headers in your $(LIST) a creates a rule to copy it to the build directory
You can make things pretty simple with vpath:
TARGS:= $(addprefix build/, $(notdir $(LIST)))
vpath %.h $(dir $(LIST))
all: $(TARGS)
build/%.h: %.h
#echo building $# from $<
...

making all rules depend on the Makefile itself

When I change a Makefile, its rules may have changed, so they should be reevaluated, but make doesn't seem to think so.
Is there any way to say, in a Makefile, that all of its targets, no matter which, depend on the Makefile itself?
(Regardless of its name.)
I'm using GNU make.
This looks like one more simple, useful, logical thing that Make should be able to do, but isn't.
Here is a workaround. If the clean rule is set up correctly, Make can execute it whenever the makefile has been altered, using an empty dummy file as a marker.
-include dummy
dummy: Makefile
#touch $#
#$(MAKE) -s clean
This will work for most targets, that is targets that are actual files and that are removed by clean, and any targets that depend on them. Side-effect targets and some PHONY targets will slip through the net.
Since GNU make version 4.3 it is now possible with the use of those two special variable:
.EXTRA_PREREQS
To add new prerequisite to every target
MAKEFILE_LIST
To get the path of the make file
To have every target depend on the current make file:
Put near the top of the file (before any include since it would affect the MAKEFILE_LIST) the following line:
.EXTRA_PREREQS:= $(abspath $(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST)))
To have every target depend on the current make file and also the make files which were included
Put the following line at the end of your file:
.EXTRA_PREREQS+=$(foreach mk, ${MAKEFILE_LIST},$(abspath ${mk}))
The only answer I know to this is to add makefile explicitly to the dependencies. For example,
%.o: %.c makefile
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $<

Makefile trickery using VPATH and include

I'm playing around with make files and the VPATH variable. Basically, I'm grabbing source files from a few different places (specified by the VPATH), and compile them into the current directory using simply a list of .o-files that I want.
So far so good, now I'm generating dependency information into a file called '.depend' and including that. Gnumake will attempt to use the rules defined so far to create the included file if it doesn't exist, so that's ok. Basically, my makefile looks like this.
VPATH=A/source:B/source:C/source
objects=first.o second.o third.o
executable: $(objects)
.depend: $(objects:.o=.c)
$(CC) -MM $^ > $#
include .depend
Now for the real question, can I suppress the generation of the .depend file in any way? I'm currently working in a clearcase environment -> sloooow, so I'd prefer to have it a bit more under control when to update the dependency information.
It's more or less an academic exercise as I could just wrap the thing in a script which is touching the .depend file before executing make (thus making it more recent than any source file), but it'd interesting to know if I can somehow suppress it using 'pure' make.
I cannot remove the dependency to the source files (i.e. using simply .depend:), as I'm depending on the $^ variable to do the VPATH resolution for me.
If there'd be any way to only update dependencies as a result of updated #include directives, that'd be even better of course.. But I'm not holding my breath for that one.. :)
If you don't want to remake .depend every time, you mustn't have a rule for it. Note that whenever you really need to remake the dependencies file, you must also remake an object file (this is not my insight, it comes from Advanced Auto-Dependency Generation, and it took me some time to grasp it). So construct .depend in the linking rule, using a PHONY target:
DEPEND_FILE = .depend
# put this command in the executable rule
$(MAKE) DEPENDENCIES
.PHONY: DEPENDENCIES
DEPENDENCIES: $(objects:.o=.c)
$(CC) -MM $^ > $(DEPEND_FILE)
-include $(DEPEND_FILE)
You can make things more efficient by having seperate depend files, one for each object, so that when one changes you don't have to recalculate the dependencies of all the objects:
# put this command in the %.o rule
$(CC) -MM $< > $*.d
-include *.d
(EDIT: just corrected a dumb mistake.)

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