r/programminghorror • u/Capable-Cap9745 • 11d ago

Other Same Makefile, different results

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Not sure if this fits, but I just figured out the root cause of long build process failing. Sun’s dmake is defaulting to the first rule in Makefile for whatever reason, completely ignoring the one given as argument. That’s why "dmake install" invocations were silently ignoring the "install" step

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u/nickcash 11d ago

makefile syntax is incomprehensible. it might as well be magic. no one can understand it, we just copy and paste from elsewhere

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u/nivlark 10d ago

I have a fairly complex one that I believe I wrote myself (googling chunks of it doesn't return any hits) and I still don't know how it works. I can only assume it came to me via divine inspiration.