Re: how to use not "also" symbolic link time, but "only"

[Paul Smith]

On Fri, 2012-04-13 at 09:07 -0700, Mark Galeck (CW) wrote:
> from: $(MAKEFILE)
>       ln -sf to $@
> 
> Except it does not work, if Makefile changes and becomes newer than
> "to", "from" is rebuilt all the time.  I want to only consider the
> timestamp of the link file, not in addition to the timestamp of the
> linked file, but instead of.  

Your question is not very clear (to me).  However there is no way in GNU
make to consider only the timestamp of the symbolic link and ignore the
timestamp of the file the link points to.

Obviously you can "touch" the target file ("from") to bring it up to
date, then it will be newer than the makefile.  That's how any normal
target would work, without adding symlinks into the mix; the same
procedure works here.

I assume there's some reason you don't want to do that.