shep@ALLSPICE.LCS.MIT.EDU (Tim Shepard) (02/17/89)
I discovered the same funniness when I typed "make -n install" after finishing the bootstraping. I think I understand what is going on. (Well at least I'm not loosing sleep over this any more.) When make is being used normally it rechecks the date on a file after running all the rules that have it as a target. If the date has not changed, then make does not trigger the subsequent targets which depend on the current target. When you do "make -n", make assumes that the target always gets updated. (What else could it do?) So, it seems that "make -n" can not show exactly what would happen if you ran make. Shucks. -Tim