We use GNU Make for our system. At the end of our makefiles, we have an include called Makedepends which generates a bunch of .d files using -MM switch on gcc. We then include the .d file for each .cc file using an include $(CXXFILES:.cc=.d) line. But when we delete file or move files, the dependancies step breaks and we have to manually delete the .d files (even a make clean doesn’t work because the dependencies fail)
Is there a way to generate these dependency .d files or include these dependency .d files which will gracefully handle a file deletion or relocation?
EDIT: For example: I have serial.cc and the makefiles generate a serial.d file which has a dependency on buffer.h but then I change it so I don’t need buffer.h any more and I delete buffer.h. Next time I run make, it will choke because it includes the .d file which still makes serial.o depend on buffer.h.
http://make.mad-scientist.net/papers/advanced-auto-dependency-generation has a description of this exact problem, and a couple of ways around it. The first is a bit misguided, but the ‘advanced’ is essentially spot on.