4 ms·

For anyone who's curious: you can use a ".PHONY" target to force targets to be rebuilt (i.e. that they don't correspond to real files). All dependencies of the

For anyone who's curious: you can use a ".PHONY" target to force targets to be rebuilt (i.e. that they don't correspond to real files). All dependencies of the .PHONY pseudo-target will be rebuilt unconditionally when encountered. Typically, "all", "clean", "install", etc. will all be phony targets as the goal isn't to literally make a file called "all". The syntax is simple: .PHONY: all clean install marks "all", "clean" and "install" as phony. Even if the file "all" happens to exist, "make all" will still trigger the build.

Bromskloss 10y ago
> All dependencies of the .PHONY pseudo-target will be rebuilt unconditionally when encountered. To be clear, they will rebuilt only if they are not already up to date relative to their own dependencies, right?
- rahkiin 10y ago
  yes. Phony is only about making sure that 'all' is seen as target, not as file or folder
  - delinka 10y ago
    This is only an issue if you do indeed have files or folders named the same as targets, right? For example, if you do have an "all" file, you want make to ignore the file when considering the 'all' target, you'd apply .PHONY to the 'all' target.
    - dilap 10y ago
      right.
lifthrasiir 10y ago
I prefer to put the phony rule right before the actual rules, it's better for understanding: .PHONY: all all: ... .PHONY: clean clean: ...