Linux Make Command

Question

True or False? (give a small explanation)

1. A phony target is ignored by make, similar to how a comment is ignored by make

2. You have a C file, something.c in your current directory.

It is possible to run: make

without writing a Makefile, and still be able to produce an executable (assume there is no error with your code)

3.Assume there is a subdirectory called backup in the current directory, and all other files in the current directory are C files. The Makefile rule:

clear:

    @mv *.c backup

will produce an error because there is no @mv command

Answer 1

1) False

1. A phony target is not ignored in a similar way to a comment. A phony target is not the name of a file and will always be executed. This makes it handy for 'release' or 'clean' rules.

2) True

1. You can run make without Makefile under certain conditions and based on the implicit rules on your system. As in your example if you have 'main.c' in your CWD and run `make main` you might wind up with make running `cc main.c -o main`. You can run `make -d` to get a good look at most, or maybe all, of the implicit rules for your machine.

3) False

1. I'm not sure I understand the question but the '@' character simply suppresses echoing of a command on the output, thus `@mv *.c backup` would silently move all C files to the 'backup' directory.