bugmake - Bugs: bug #59762, make --touch produce local...

 
 

bug #59762: make --touch produce local spurious empty files with out-of-tree Makefile strategy

Submitter:  None
Submitted:  Thu 24 Dec 2020 03:43:44 PM UTC
   
 
Severity:  3 - Normal Item Group:  Bug
Status:  Not A Bug Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  None Open/Closed:  Closed
Component Version:  4.1 Operating System:  POSIX-Based
Fixed Release:  None Triage Status:  None
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Mon 15 Mar 2021 06:38:02 AM UTC, comment #3: 

There is no way to avoid this.  The --touch option will touch all the targets that make wants to build.  If you say make --touch file2.o pgm.o then file2.o and pgm.o are targets and make will touch them.

There is no way to avoid this: it's not possible to mark certain targets as being "not to be touched" by the --touch option.

All I can say is that I find the --touch option somewhat dangerous and I don't recommend its use.  It's too easy to accidentally bring some file up to date that should instead have been rebuilt, and cause your builds to fail or worse, your build to succeed but your generated output to fail in subtle ways.

If you really want to have this facility available and you really don't want to have these extra files, you'll have to invent your own "touch" facility that doesn't use make's --touch flag.

For example you could create a touch-% target that touched $* then instead of make --touch file2.o pgm.o you could run make touch-file2.o touch-pgm.o.

Paul D. Smith <psmith>
Group administrator
Thu 07 Jan 2021 05:13:11 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Thank you for this explanation.

Is there a way to preserve the out-of-tree compilation (here illustrated by the build directory), but avoid this double touch?

Martin Deshaies-Jacques <martn>
Fri 25 Dec 2020 02:57:37 AM UTC, comment #1: 

You target.mk contains rule

% :: $(DIR_TARGET) ; :

When you run
$ make file1.o

make finds this rule, with % being file1.o and its prerequisite being build. Make then makes this prerequisite and then proceeds to execute the recipe to make file1.o from this prerequisite. In this rule this recipe is :.

See that : printed after linking pgm.x?

When you run

$ make -t file1.o
make finds this rule, with % being file1.o and its prerequisite being build. Make then makes this prerequisite (this is the first touch which creates file1.o in the build directory) and then proceeds to make file1.o. Because -t is specified  make touches file1.o in the parent directory.

Dmitry Goncharov <dgoncharov>
Thu 24 Dec 2020 03:43:44 PM UTC, original submission:  

We implemented the out-of-tree compilation strategy (http://make.mad-scientist.net/papers/multi-architecture-builds/#target.mk) described by Paul D. Smith on his blog (http://mad-scientist.net/).
We are very thankful for this method as it helped simplify a lot our multi-architecture compilation process.

However, when using `make --touch` it also `touch` files in the root directory, files named after all targets that needed to be touched (it also touch the proper targets in their own build directories).

I observed this issue with `make` 4.1  on Ubuntu 18.04.2 LST and 4.2.1 on Debian 10 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15.

I made a simplified reproduction usecase which is available on gitlab and can be obtained with

git clone https://gitlab.com/martn/makeTouchIssue.git

I also attach the simplified `Makefile` and `target.mk` for easier reference (the actual sources are just dummy files).

Here is the scenario:

pgm.o: file1.o file2.o
file2.o: file1.o

The compilation follows the out-of-tree strategy above mentioned; it compiles in `./build`.

  1. I make a full build of a project


$ ls src/
file1.f90  file2.f90  pgm.f90
$ make
compiling file1.o
compiling file2.o
compiling pgm.o
linking pgm.x
:
$ ls build/
file1.o  file2.o  pgm.o  pgm.x


  1. I touch `src/file1.f90` (simulating a modification to the code that would not change any interface)


  1. `make` would then want to rebuild everything

But in fact I would just need to recompile `file1.o` and relink `pgm.x`.

  1. So I recompile `file1.o` and use `make --touch` to prevent recompiling the other objects


$ make file1.o
compiling file1.o
:
$ make --touch file2.o pgm.o
touch file2.o
touch pgm.o
touch file2.o
touch pgm.o

Here is the issue; it did touch the object files in `./build` but also touched two (empty) files in `./`:

$ ls
build  file2.o  Makefile  pgm.o  README.md  src  target.mk


Although I am not sure, I think it is related to the `target.mk` mechanics; so it might not be a bug, but simply an unwanted side effect.

After concerting with my colleagues we thought pertinent to mention it.
Obviously for real project, these spurious files can seriously clutter the root directory.

Anonymous

 

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Attached Files
file #50561:  Makefile added by None (835B - application/octet-stream)
file #50562:  target.mk added by None (322B - text/x-makefile)

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2021-03-15 psmith StatusNone Not A Bug
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2020-12-24 None Attached File- Added Makefile, #50561
        Attached File- Added target.mk, #50562

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