CODEWITHSUNDEEP
makefilegnu-make
Kurt E. Clothier
Kurt E. Clothier

Reputation: 286

How should you use .PHONY in included Makefiles?

Say I have a set of Makefile modules:

# foo.mk

rule1: prereq1
    recipe1

and

# bar.mk

rule2: prereq2
    recipe2

and a primary Makefile:

# Makefile

include foo.mk
include bar.mk

Should .PHONY: be included in each individual .mk file for the phony targets just in that file, or should there be some acculmulated list that is included only in the primary Makefile?

# foo.mk
TARGETS += rule1
...
# bar.mk
TARGETS += rule2
...
# Makefile
.PHONY: $(TARGETS)

I didn't find anything relevant in the GNU Make docs or similar questions.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2165

Answers (2)

esmail
esmail

Reputation: 667

As with other targets, you can add to .PHONY multiple times cumulatively. So giving each file its own .PHONY is can be a nice way of keeping things compartmentalized.

Upvotes: 0

Beta
Beta

Reputation: 99124

The statement

.PHONY: rule1

tells Make that it should not consider "rule1" the name of a file to be built. Suppose you put it in the Makefile. What happens when you run another makefile, either foo.mk or a makefile that includes it?

When you run the rule1 rule, do you want Make to treat it as a PHONY target? If your answer isn't "that depends on which makefile I'm using", then you should have the statement in the makefile that defines the rule.

Upvotes: 1

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