schorr@ai.mit.edu (Andrew J. Schorr) (10/07/89)
Roland, I am having a problem with force targets. 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>