Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.28+, H06.05+)

make(1) OSS Shell and Utilities Reference Manual
section, Special Targets, lists the special sources, or prerequisites, and targets for a make
file.
Special Targets
Special targets must not be included with other targets; that is, they must be the only target
specified. These control the operation of the make command.
The supported special target names are:
.DEFAULT
This is used as the rule for any target (that was used only as a source) that make cannot
create in any other way. Only the shell script is used. The < (left angle bracket) vari-
able of a target that inherits .DEFAULT’s commands is set to the target’s own name.
.IGNORE
Prerequisites of this target are targets themselves; this causes errors from commands
associated with them to be ignored. If no prerequisites are speci
fied, this is the
equivalent of specifying the -i flag.
.POSIX This keyword currently has no effect on make behavior, because it is the only behavior
supported. However, you should use this as the first noncommand line of a makefile if
you want to avoid possible conflicts with future enhancements.
.PRECIOUS
Prerequisites of this target are targets themselves. .PRECIOUS prevents the target
from being removed. If no sources are specified, the .PRECIOUS attribute is applied
to every target in the file. Normally, when make is interrupted (for example, with
SIGHUP, SIGTERM, SIGINT,orSIGQUIT signals), it removes any partially made
targets. If make was invoked with the -n, -p,or-q flags, however, the target is con-
sidered to have the .PRECIOUS attribute.
.SILENT
Prerequisites of the target are targets themselves; this prevents commands associated
with the target from being written to the standard output file before they are executed.
If no sources are specified, the .SILENT attribute is applied to every command in the
file.
.SUFFIXES
Prerequisites of the target are appended to the list of known suffixes. If no suffixes are
specified, any previously specified suffixes are deleted. These suffixes are used by
inference rules, as described in the Inference Rules subsection. To change the order of
suffixes, you need to specify an empty .SUFFIXES entry, then a new list of .SUF-
FIXES entries. Makefiles must not associate commands with .SUFFIXES.
Inference Rules
The make command has a default set of inference rules, which you can supplement, or overwrite,
with additional inference rule definitions in the makefile. Inference rules consist of target
suffixes and commands. From the suffixes, make infers the prerequisites, and from both the
suffixes and their prerequisites, make command can infer how to make a target up-to-date. Infer-
ence rules have the following format:
rule:
<Tab>command
...
where rule has one of the following forms:
.s1 A single-suffix inference rule. This rule describes how to build a target that is appended
with one of the single suffixes.
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