kbuild: if_changed: document single use per target limitation
Users of if_changed could easily feel invited to use it to divide a
recipe into parts like:
a: prereq FORCE
$(call if_changed,do_a)
$(call if_changed,do_b)
But this is problematic, because if_changed should not be used more
than once per target: in the above example, if_changed stores the
command-line of the given command in .a.cmd and when a is up-to-date
with respect to prereq, the file .a.cmd contains the command-line for
the last command executed, i.e. do_b.
When the recipe is then executed again, without any change of
prerequisites, the command-line check for do_a will fail, do_a will be
executed and stored in .a.cmd. The next check, however, will still see
the old content (the file isn't re-read) and if_changed will skip
do_b, because the command-line test will not recognize a change. On
the next execution of the recipe the roles will flip: do_a is OK but
do_b not and it will be executed. And so on...
Signed-off-by: Dirk Gouders <dirk@gouders.net>
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>
1 file changed