Re: Intermediate file removal ... considered harmful??

[Dmitry Goncharov]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 5:39 PM Paul Smith <psmith@gnu.org> wrote:

> Third, there's not a flexible way to disable intermediate files:
agree.

> I think it is still useful to keep intermediate files as a concept,
> where if an intermediate file in a chain of implicit rules doesn't
> exist but the mod time of the source end of the chain is newer than the
> target end of the chain, we don't bother to rebuild the chain.
agree.

> Leaving aside backward-compat issues, is there a current use-case for
> the auto-delete feature of intermediate files?
Perhaps only the same reason make was originally coded to remove
intermediate files, to free up space.
Space is limited on embedded devices. Building natively on embedded
devices may benefit from removal of intermediate files.
i personally have not found this removal to be useful.

i also have not found just removal alone to the root of the trouble.
But rather all these factors together
1. removal of intermediate files
and
2. absence of an intermediate file causes no rebuild
and
3. absence of a mechanism to mark chosen patterns as not intermediate.


regards, Dmitry