Question

I’m not sure if it’s gmake or gcc that I don’t understand here.

I’m using the -MM and -MD options to generate dependency rules for the Unit Testing framework I’m using. Specifically:

$(TEST_OBJ_DIR)/%.d: $(TEST_SRC_DIR)/%.cpp
  @$(CPPC) -MM -MD $< -o $@
  @sed -i -e 's|\(.*\)\.o:|$(OBJ_DIR)/\1.o $(TEST_OBJ_DIR)/\1.d $(TEST_OBJ_DIR)/\1.o:|' $@

-include $(TEST_DEP_FILES)

When I run make, after all binaries are linked (properly), I see the following extra (unexplained) line before make exits

rm test/obj/dice.d test/obj/regex.o test/obj/inventoryContainer.d test/obj/color-string.d test/obj/dice.o test/obj/inventoryContainer.o test/obj/color-string.o test/obj/regex.d

From whence is that rm command coming? The only place – anywhere – that I have an rm command in my makefile is in the clean directive

test-clean:
  rm -f $(TEST_BIN_FILES)
  rm -f $(TEST_OBJ_DIR)/*.{a,d,o}

Any ideas?

Answer 1

make will automatically create intermediate files if necessary to chain two rules together, but it will delete them at the end of the build. You can use the .PRECIOUS special target to prevent it from removing them