Re: make -n executes RCS commands

[Paul D. Smith]

%% "Aaron S. Hawley" <address@hidden> writes:

  ash> The following behavior seems broken.
  ash> $ ls script.awk
  ash> ls: script.awk: No such file or directory

  ash> $ ls RCS/script.awk,v
  ash> RCS/script.awk,v

  ash> $ make -n script.awk
  ash> co  RCS/script.awk,v script.awk
  ash> RCS/script.awk,v  -->  script.awk
  ash> revision 1.1
  ash> done

  ash> $ ls script.awk
  ash> script.awk

  ash> Couldn't find any mention of this behavior in the manual.

The builtin rule for checking things out of source uses the "+" prefix
character.  You can find the builtin rules with the -p option, something
like this:

    $ make -pf /dev/null
        ...
    # default
    CHECKOUT,v = +$(if $(wildcard $@),,$(CO) $(COFLAGS) $< $@)
        ...
    %:: RCS/%,v
    #  commands to execute (built-in):
            $(CHECKOUT,v)

The "+" token tells GNU make to run this command line even if -n is
given.

-- 
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