documentation issue with $^

[John Ulvr]

$^ and $+ are defined twice in the documentation (http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html).  The second time, it does not mention the exclusion of order-only dependencies, implying they are included.

 

 

$^

The names of all the prerequisites, with spaces between them. For prerequisites which are archive members, only the named member is used (see Archives). A target has only one prerequisite on each other file it depends on, no matter how many times each file is listed as a prerequisite. So if you list a prerequisite more than once for a target, the value of $^ contains just one copy of the name. This list does not contain any of the order-only prerequisites; for those see the ‘$|’ variable, below.

$+

This is like ‘$^’, but prerequisites listed more than once are duplicated in the order they were listed in the makefile. This is primarily useful for use in linking commands where it is meaningful to repeat library file names in a particular order.

 

…

 

$^

$+

The names of all the prerequisites, with spaces between them. For prerequisites which are archive members, only the named member is used (see Archives). The value of $^ omits duplicate prerequisites, while $+ retains them and preserves their order.

 

John