Sometimes makefiles can be remade from other files, such as RCS or SCCS
files. If a makefile can be remade from other files, you probably want
make to get an up-to-date version of the makefile to read in.
To this end, after reading in all makefiles, make will consider
each as a goal target and attempt to update it. If a makefile has a
rule which says how to update it (found either in that very makefile or
in another one) or if an implicit rule applies to it (see Using Implicit Rules), it will be updated if necessary. After
all makefiles have been checked, if any have actually been changed,
make starts with a clean slate and reads all the makefiles over
again. (It will also attempt to update each of them over again, but
normally this will not change them again, since they are already up to
date.)
If you know that one or more of your makefiles cannot be remade and you
want to keep make from performing an implicit rule search on
them, perhaps for efficiency reasons, you can use any normal method of
preventing implicit rule lookup to do so. For example, you can write an
explicit rule with the makefile as the target, and an empty command
string (see Using Empty Commands).
If the makefiles specify a double-colon rule to remake a file with
commands but no prerequisites, that file will always be remade
(see Double-Colon). In the case of makefiles, a makefile that has a
double-colon rule with commands but no prerequisites will be remade every
time make is run, and then again after make starts over
and reads the makefiles in again. This would cause an infinite loop:
make would constantly remake the makefile, and never do anything
else. So, to avoid this, make will not attempt to
remake makefiles which are specified as targets of a double-colon rule
with commands but no prerequisites.
If you do not specify any makefiles to be read with ‘-f’ or
‘--file’ options, make will try the default makefile names;
see What Name to Give Your Makefile. Unlike
makefiles explicitly requested with ‘-f’ or ‘--file’ options,
make is not certain that these makefiles should exist. However,
if a default makefile does not exist but can be created by running
make rules, you probably want the rules to be run so that the
makefile can be used.
Therefore, if none of the default makefiles exists, make will try
to make each of them in the same order in which they are searched for
(see What Name to Give Your Makefile)
until it succeeds in making one, or it runs out of names to try. Note
that it is not an error if make cannot find or make any makefile;
a makefile is not always necessary.
When you use the ‘-t’ or ‘--touch’ option (see Instead of Executing the Commands), you would not want to use an out-of-date makefile to decide which targets to touch. So the ‘-t’ option has no effect on updating makefiles; they are really updated even if ‘-t’ is specified. Likewise, ‘-q’ (or ‘--question’) and ‘-n’ (or ‘--just-print’) do not prevent updating of makefiles, because an out-of-date makefile would result in the wrong output for other targets. Thus, ‘make -f mfile -n foo’ will update mfile, read it in, and then print the commands to update foo and its prerequisites without running them. The commands printed for foo will be those specified in the updated contents of mfile.
However, on occasion you might actually wish to prevent updating of even the makefiles. You can do this by specifying the makefiles as goals in the command line as well as specifying them as makefiles. When the makefile name is specified explicitly as a goal, the options ‘-t’ and so on do apply to them.
Thus, ‘make -f mfile -n mfile foo’ would read the makefile mfile, print the commands needed to update it without actually running them, and then print the commands needed to update foo without running them. The commands for foo will be those specified by the existing contents of mfile.