Re: makefile cruft

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

ok, nevermind, i found this in the make info pages:

     Usually when a command fails, if it has changed the target file at
  all, the file is corrupted and cannot be used--or at least it is not
  completely updated.  Yet the file's timestamp says that it is now up to
  date, so the next time `make' runs, it will not try to update that
  file.  The situation is just the same as when the command is killed by a
  signal; *note Interrupts::.  So generally the right thing to do is to
  delete the target file if the command fails after beginning to change
  the file.  `make' will do this if `.DELETE_ON_ERROR' appears as a
  target.  This is almost always what you want `make' to do, but it is
  not historical practice; so for compatibility, you must explicitly
  request it.
  
i suppose when gcc fails it is the one that removes the output file, so
must all applications that want this behavior.

thi