Subj : Re: Some makefile questions
To   : borland.public.cpp.borlandcpp
From : Ed Mulroy
Date : Wed Jun 15 2005 01:37 pm

> 1) Is it possible to use a directory as target or source?

No, but what you can do is create a tag file in the directory and test for 
that.

c:\mydir\foodir\tag.txt :
  - mkdir c:\mydir\foodir
  @echo abc >c:\mydir\foodir\tag.txt

> 2) Is it possible to have make exit gracefully if some source
> does not exist?

It already does that, issuing a message something like
  name.ext does not exist, do not know how to make it
and exits with a return value of non-zero

> 3) Can macros be defined within a description block?
> i.e. something like:
>
> foo.obj : foo.cpp
>    cl foo.cpp
> MACRO = bar

There is no block limitation on the macro.  If it is defined, then it is 
known from then on in the make file.

..  Ed

> Matthias Reuss wrote in message
> news:42b034a2$1@newsgroups.borland.com...
>
> having to use Borland's make for a specific project, I
> stumbled upon some questions:
>
> 1) Is it possible to use a directory as target or source?
>
> e.g. something like
>
> c:\mydir\foodir: c:\mydir
>    mkdir c:\mydir\foodir
>
> 2) Is it possible to have make exit gracefully if some source
> does not exist?
> My project needs a special compiler which is only present on
> some computers here; on those computers that do not have
> this compiler, make should only issue a message but the
> driver script should not abort (it aborts when make
> raises an error).
> I have not found an "!exit" directive, and !error does raise an error.
>
> 3) Can macros be defined within a description block?
> i.e. something like:
>
> foo.obj : foo.cpp
>    cl foo.cpp
> MACRO = bar
>
> This did not work, however I did not find this topic in the documentation.
> What I wanted to do is save to a variable whether foo.obj had to be made 
> or
> had been up-to-date.

.