On Fri, 2024-10-11 at 09:45 +0000, Edward Welbourne wrote: > Paul Smith (10 October 2024 17:56) wrote: > > .PRECIOUS is dangerous and should almost never be needed or used. > > This danger can be avoided by having a recipe (or the command it > runs) generate the new file under an alternative name and finish up, > on success, by doing a rename to replace the old version.
Yes for sure. But, I wonder why go to the trouble when it's even simpler to just not use .PRECIOUS in the first place :). Of course there are still situations where make can't clean up: if it's killed via -9 (SIGKILL) instead of SIGINT for example, so "defensive makefile recipes" can still be a good idea if you are trying to create a truly bullet-proof build system (maybe for a hands-off CI implementation). As you point out, though, it requires cooperation on the part of the tools make is invoking.
