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gnu-make

Prevent make from ever deleting anything

I have a Makefile set up as

config/%.toml:
    stuff

where I do

make config/x.toml

which runs a series of scripts based on the configuration file x.

Make will delete this file if I ^C or if the operation fails in certain cases, but not always.

I have tried adding

PRECIOUS: config/%.toml otherstuff/%

but this is sometimes ignored, and I have to recover the config file occasionally.

I want to prevent make from deleting anything, anywhere, at any time, globally, forever and always. How can I do this?

Solution

  • Use .PRECIOUS: ... not PRECIOUS: ...

    As @MadScientist points out, I was writing PRECIOUS: ... instead of .PRECIOUS: ...