Re: this is embarrasing... prerequisiste gets updated, but make still says it is older than target

[david . hagood]

What if there were a directive one could issue to make to say "Re-read all
timestamps", that could be included as a make command?

One way would be to use the Make to Make communications, so you could
write a rule like this:

screwy_rule:
  do_weird_stuff
  $(MAKE) --command reread_timestamps

Then the invoked version of Make could communicate to the main make to
tell it to re-read (or just invalidate in cache) all time stamps.

Were you to do that, you'd also have a hook for other ways to control Make
as well. For example, I have CORBA code that needs to parse the IDL to
determine dependency data, and there's no good way right now for me to say
to make "OK, now this rule has created a bunch of dependency and rule
files for you, go re-read them." Being able to do something like:

include $(wildcard idl_generated/*mak)
process_idl: foo.idl bar.idl narf.idl
   generate_files_from_idl
   $(MAKE) --command rescan_makes

would really clean up the process.