An issue I have with make is that it can not handle non-existence dependencies. DJB noted this in 2003 [1]. To quote myself on this [2]:
> Especially when using C or C++, often target files depend on nonexistent files as well, meaning that a target file should be rebuilt when a previosly nonexistent file is created: If the preprocessor includes /usr/include/stdio.h because it could not find /usr/local/include/stdio.h, the creation of the latter file should trigger a rebuild.
I did some research on the topic using the repository of the game Liberation Circuit [3] and my own redo implementation [4] … it turns out that a typical project in C or C++ has lots of non-existence dependencies. How do make users handle non-existence dependencies – except for always calling “make clean”?
> Especially when using C or C++, often target files depend on nonexistent files as well, meaning that a target file should be rebuilt when a previosly nonexistent file is created: If the preprocessor includes /usr/include/stdio.h because it could not find /usr/local/include/stdio.h, the creation of the latter file should trigger a rebuild.
I did some research on the topic using the repository of the game Liberation Circuit [3] and my own redo implementation [4] … it turns out that a typical project in C or C++ has lots of non-existence dependencies. How do make users handle non-existence dependencies – except for always calling “make clean”?
[1] http://cr.yp.to/redo/honest-nonfile.html
[2] http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/posts/redo-gcc-automati...
[3] https://github.com/linleyh/liberation-circuit
[4] http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/bin/redo-sh.html (redo-dot gives a graph of dependencies and non-existence dependencies)