touch commands in Makefiles

Brendan J Simon
2002-01-25T05:55:05Z

Why are header file touched in Makefiles ?

The reason I ask is that I am using a configuration management system to
maintain the linux kernel. It "checks out" all source files read-only
(actuall it uses symbolic links to a baseline directory which is
read-only). You then tell it which files you intend to modify and it
will check those files out as read-write to the local sandbox.

When trying to do a "make zImage" some of the header files (eg.
include/linux/types.h) are being touched by a dependency rule. The
build is failing as the files are readonly and can't be touched. I
don't understand why the header files need to be touched. Surely the
"make dep" should only generate rules to recompile .c files.

Thanks for any help explaining why header files need to be touched.
Regards,
Brendan Simon.