Re: Build Rule Race Condition

[Eric Melski]

Schuster, Peter wrote:

> There is a build rule that is causing a problem because it says that if 
> any of 3 output files are out-of-date compared to a common source file, 
> run a program to process the source file and produce the 3 output 
> files.  The simplified rule is as follows:
>
>  
>
> myfile.a myfile.b myfile.c: myfile.source
>
>                         process $<
>
>  
>
> process then opens all 3 output files for writing.
>
> ... trimmed for brevity ...
>  
>
> The ideal solution is for make to link all 3 output files together, so 
> that as soon as it fires the job to process any of the 3, all 3 are 
> marked as “running” and no further jobs are started.  Is this possible 
> with make?

I recently wrote an article for CM Crossroads about precisely this topic:

        http://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/13162/745/

Hope that helps,

Eric Melski
Electric Cloud, Inc.
http://blog.electric-cloud.com/