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I’m new to make and makefiles, so forgive me if this is very basic.
I’m looking through some makefiles in my project and I’m seeing 2 types of targets — targets that don’t begin with a . character and targets that do.
And from what I’m guessing, it seems like the ‘.target-name’ targets are always executed, is my assumption true? I did read about makefiles by Googling but didn’t find anything specific to this.
And as always, thanks for the answers!
No.
The targets with a dot are normally special meaning targets (i.e. their functioniality is builtin into make). One of them is .PHONY, this is the one that defines the targets which are always executed (that means, the commands in their rules are run unconditionally).
But there are also others, like .DEFAULT for the default rule, or .PRECIOUS with does not delete implicit built targets when interrupted.