[ProgSoc] [TFL] The TFM build process

John Elliot jj5 at jj5.net
Thu Nov 19 16:21:53 EST 2009


Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale wrote:
> Hope this makes it clearer but I can go into more detail if you like.

That's much clearer, thanks!

One thing that I still find a little confusing is how make treats 
targets whose names correspond to file names, as in "all: tfm.pdf", 
"tfm.pdf: ...".

Does the line "all: tfm.pdf" say that 'all' is dependent on the 'file' 
"tfm.pdf", or on the 'target' "tfm.pdf"? If 'all' is dependent on the 
"tfm.pdf" file, then how does make know that the target "tfm.pdf" is the 
target that can update the "tfm.pdf" file? And if 'all' is instead 
dependent on the "tfm.pdf" target, then how does make know that the 
target "tfm.pdf" is the target that builds the "tfm.pdf" file? 
Actually... maybe make doesn't need to know about the "tfm.pdf" file, 
just the target... which would mean that "all: tfm.pdf" says that 'all' 
is dependent on the 'target' "tfm.pdf"... that seems like the only thing 
that would make sense and work. The "tfm.pdf" target is then dependent 
on a bunch of files, so it would seem that target dependencies can be 
either targets or files (or both?), is that correct?









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