Is this really the way it is supposed to work. It didn't work like that in previous releases of make. To exemplify, I want a makefile with automatic dependencies. If I write it like this:

--- Makefile ---
all: hello

include hello.d

%.d: %.c
$(CC) -M -MG -MT "$*.o $@" -MF $@ $<
------

--- hello.c ---
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
  printf("Hello\n");
}
------

I will get the following output if hello.d does not exist.

Makefile:6: hello.d: No such file or directory
cc -M -MG -MT "hello.o hello.d" -MF hello.d hello.c
cc    -c -o hello.o hello.c
cc   hello.o   -o hello

I want to get rid of the error message (because it isn't an error) so I put a "-" infront of the include directive in the makefile. Everything looks fine until I try to include a file that does not exist (e.g. hello.h) in hello.c. Then I will get the following output:

cc -M -MG -MT "hello.o hello.d" -MF hello.d hello.c

The compilation just stops with no error message. The exit code is 2 if one checks it. What I expect is a row like:

make: * No rule to make target `hello.h', needed by `hello.d'.  Stop.

This was the way it worked in earlier releases of make. Maybe there is another way around this but I cannot find it.

Regards,
Tobias

I'm aware that -include is supposed to produce no error if file.d does not exist. But in my case file.d exists, it's just that the header file.h is not there and cannot be remade. AFAICS nowhere in the manual it is mentioned that also the errors IN an EXISTING makefile fragment are suppressed with -include.

Franz.

with these 2 files:

Content of Makefile:
all: file.o

%.d:
        touch $@
        exit 127

%.h:
        @echo "File '$@' does not exist."
        exit 128

-include file.d


Content of file.d:
file.o file.d: file.h

I only get:
# gmake
File 'file.h' does not exist.
exit 128
#

but no error exit code. Strictly this could also be a documentation bug, because there it talks about "does not exist AND cannot be remade" for -include. Maybe the AND should be changed to OR. In that case please consider this as an enhancement request for a variation of the -include directive, which will return an error in this case.

Thanks,
Franz.