PHONY target is not working

Applications Programming
1

Hi,

I am trying to write one makefile with phony target "clean" ...it is working fine when there is no file exist by name "clean", while it create a new file "clean" , PHONY clean is not working.

.

PHONY : clean
clean:
        rm -f hello.txt bye.txt
        @echo "Files are deleted"

when i run this clean like

$make clean
`clean' is up to date.

(is is showing this message when a file by name clean exist in my local dir)

Can you please advise me ??

Thanks
Amit

2

Obviously you have the right idea that you want to create a phony target, since any file 'clean' would show as up to date since it has no dependancies.

Your code does not work however because the built-in name for phony targets is actually .PHONY not PHONY. I tested the following to work on a Debian system using GNU make:

 
.PHONY: clean
clean:
     rm -f hello.txt bye.txt
     @echo "Files are deleted"
3

I'd also note that not all versions of make support phony targets. GNU make definitely does though.

4

Yes, i also came to know that .PHONY target is dependent on make version on OS type, so some times it may show such type of behaviour.

thanks for your help

Amit