Re: targets built to an "output" directory.

[Ian Dunbar]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for your reply.

> > default: ${OUTDIR}/conf/lang/arch/a.txt
>
> The prerequisites of rules should typically be in constant locations
> with respect to the make file.  Since the prerequisite for default
> contains a variable path, the requirement will move around.

Well, it's only moving around between different invocations of make, so I 
don't see that as an issue, since make is stateless. Also, this method works 
fine for processing one level of file extension, it just seems to have a 
problem with 2 or more.

e.g. change the target to:

default: ${OUTDIR}/arch/a.txt.conf.lang

and it will be made without problems.

Nevertheless, what you said gave me an idea for one part of what may be 
wrong. If I change the VPATH line to be (using my original default: target):

VPATH = src ${OUTDIR}

Now it still fails, but if from the command line I type:

make build/arch/a.txt.conf.lang

make build/lang/arch/a.txt.conf

make build/conf/lang/arch/a.txt

make
make: Nothing to be done for `default'.

All commands complete successfully so it obviously knows how to build all 
the pre-requisites. The only difference is in it's treatment of targets when 
using "." and "build". For "." it can somehow identify many levels of 
pre-requisites, but for "build" it can only identify one level before 
complaining, even though it knows how to make them if I do each step 
manually.

> What are you really trying to do here at a high level?

Hard to explain without going into far too much detail, but basically 
multi-configuration builds. This is a quite simplified example of the 
fundamental problem I am having.

Best regards,
Ian

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