Re: make: ignore stale .depend

["Simon J. Gerraty" <sjg%crufty.net@localhost>]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 03:59:04 +0000, David Holland writes:
>On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 03:50:29AM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> > Yes, but can we please make it an explicit attribute instead of a
> > special-case hack for .depend? That is, something like
> > 
> >    .MISSING: ../foo/foo.c ../foo/foo.h ../include/stupid.h
>
>Make that .OPTIONAL, which apparently already exists... and mkdep can
>already issue this line.

Hmmm.

If .depend contains a stale dependency which is tagged .OPTIONAL
make simply ignores it and the target is considered up-to-date.

It would be better if it considered it out-of-date which is a safer
failure mode.