hi, some years ago i already asked for help in same situation. but maybe i was not able to explain the problem. second attempt:
i like to generate x (executable) depending on *.o (object) --1-- i started without n.o (everything in x*.c : main(), ..) cc=gcc -Wall -Wextra -Werror ... xs=x1 x2 x3 x4 os= (still empty) in=-Ipath (actually empty) ln=-lname (empty) all: $(xs) ## generate all in list 'xs' %: TAB %.c $(os) ## os still empty TAB $(cc) $(in) -o $@ $(ln) `make` generates x1..x4 with explicit given rule. this works fine. --2-- now i add n.o (os=n.o -> $(os) not empty anymore) and a new rule for objects ( i tried to change the order of rules ) %.o: TAB %.c %.h TAB $(cc) $(in) -o $@ -c $< when i call make n.o ## n.o is build make x1 ## x1 (now depending on n.o) is build the explicit given rules are used. when i call `make` (after `make clean` -> no x and no n.o) then the explicit rule for x is not found, and so dependencies $(os) are not build. `make x1` does not work, too, if n.o does not exist. long time ago, when i used make for the first time, i cannot remember such problems. i`d like to have two rules, one for executables, one for objects (1) % : %.c $(os) $^ (2) %.o : %.c %.h $< thanks in advance, Andreas.
