Dependency issue in GNU Make?

[Michael Opdenacker]

Hello,

I found the below problem using GNU Make 3.79.1.
What do you think?

Don't hesitate to get back to me for more details or to ask me to run
more experiments.

You can download the testcase files from
http://michaelo.free.fr/gnu/make/make_feb21_2002.tar.gz

Cheers,

    Michael.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

GNU Make dependency problem testcase
------------------------------------

Reported by Michael Opdenacker <address@hidden>
Feb 21, 2002

Makefile
--------

step1:
 touch $@
step2: step1
 touch $@
step3: step2
 touch $@
step4: step3
 touch $@
step5: step4
 touch $@

How to reproduce the problem
----------------------------

> /bin/rm step*
> make -t step5
> /bin/rm step1
> make -t step5

I get:

touch step1
touch step2
make: `step5' is up to date.

I expected to have:

touch step1
touch step2
touch step3
touch step4
touch step5
make: `step5' is up to date.

Additional info
---------------

- I am using GNU Make 3.79.1 on GNU / Linux Mandrake 8.1
- I also observed this with GNU Make 3.79.1 on Sun Solaris 8.
- With Sun Solaris 8 /usr/ccs/bin/make, this doesn't happen.

--
Michael Opdenacker  address@hidden
GNU Project home:   http://www.gnu.org/
GNU Typist home:    http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/
Personal home page: http://michaelo.free.fr/