This is very cool. A while back I started an experiment/prototype called "make-audit"; this is a (draft) tool to report when an execution of GNU make reads or

This is very cool. A while back I started an experiment/prototype called "make-audit"; this is a (draft) tool to report when an execution of GNU make reads or changes files in ways that are inconsistent with its Makefile: https://github.com/david-a-wheeler/make-audit https://github.com/david-a-wheeler/make-audit It's nowhere ready for serious use, but it can detect the following: * Error: Target TARGET : unreported prerequisites: SET : The make recipe for creating TARGET is reading from the prerequisites in SET, but the makefile fails to report them as dependencies. You may want to add SET to the prerequisites of TARGET. * Error: Target TARGET : claimed but unused prerequisites: SET : The make recipe for creating TARGET claims that it depends on SET, but the items in SET were never read. You may want to remove SET from the prerequisites of TARGET. * Error: Target TARGET : unreported target: SET The make recipe for updating TARGET also modifies the files in SET but this is not reported. * Error: Target TARGET : unmodified reported target: SET This depended on Poor Man's File Auditor (pmaudit): https://github.com/boyski/pmaudit https://github.com/boyski/pmaudit