Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/7] Makefile: mark 'check-builtins' as a .PHONY target

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2021 10:47:42 -0700

Denton Liu <[email-masked]> writes:

> Then convention in Git's Makefile is to mark targets which do not
> actually generate any precious files (such as static checking targets).

s/Then/The/ has been pointed out, but I am not sure what "precious"
means here.  I do not think you are referring to the distinction
between ordinary targets and .PRECIOUS targets here, but the use of
the word makes readers wonder if some interaction with the .PRECIOUS
marking was taken into consideration.

> .PHONY enables the target to still run, even if a file is erroneously
> created with the same name as the target.

True.  Another convention is to "build" such a target with
double-colon rule.  The existing code already follows the
convention, so there is nothing the patch text needs to do, but if
we explain the change in the log message to make the code follow
conventions, we probably should mention it as well for completeness.

Thanks.

> Mark 'check-builtins' as a .PHONY target.
>
> Signed-off-by: Denton Liu <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  Makefile | 1 +
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>
> diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
> index dfb0f1000f..6dbecdb606 100644
> --- a/Makefile
> +++ b/Makefile
> @@ -3236,6 +3236,7 @@ check-docs::
>  
>  ### Make sure built-ins do not have dups and listed in git.c
>  #
> +.PHONY: check-builtins
>  check-builtins::
>  	./check-builtins.sh