Running make in contrib/subtree does not create executable

Running "make" in contrib/subtree no longer creates the git-subtree executable:

$ git describe
v2.1.0
$ make -C contrib/subtree
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/make -C ../../ GIT-VERSION-FILE
GIT_VERSION = 2.1.0
make[1]: `GIT-VERSION-FILE' is up to date.
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/make -C ../../ GIT-VERSION-FILE
make[1]: `GIT-VERSION-FILE' is up to date.
make: `../../GIT-VERSION-FILE' is up to date.
$ ls contrib/subtree/git-subtree
ls: contrib/subtree/git-subtree: No such file or directory

The change appears to be inadvertent. I bisected it to 8e2a5ccad11bc21eb72499133bc884024e299983 ("contrib/subtree/Makefile:
use GIT-VERSION-FILE").

This was reproduced on OS X 10.9 with GNU make 3.81.

-Jack

You should be able to run "make" in contrib/subtree with no arguments and get the "all" target. This was broken by 8e2a5cc (contrib/subtree/Makefile: use GIT-VERSION-FILE, 2014-05-06), which put the rule for GIT-VERSION-FILE higher in the file.

We can fix this by putting an empty "all::" target at the top of the file. That fixes this instance and future-proofs against it happening again.

---

Thanks for a clear report. The patch below should fix it. This is the same trick we use in the top-level Makefile. I notice we don't use it in t/Makefile or Documentation/Makefile, though. Maybe we should.

I also notice that GIT-VERSION-FILE is included first in the top-level Makefile, but in contrib/subtree/Makefile it comes after we include config.mak and friends. I wonder if that would ever matter. I can see somebody adjusting their config.mak based on the git version, but it's probably not likely. It would only be used by somebody who compiles historical git versions a lot (i.e., git devs). And it would require using make's "simply expanded variables", since regular variables aren't expanded until point of use. So it seems unlikely that anybody cares.

 contrib/subtree/Makefile | 4 +++-
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

index d9a0ce2..8deffad 100644
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+all::
+
 -include ../../config.mak.autogen
 -include ../../config.mak
 

@@ -34,7 +36,7 @@ GIT_SUBTREE_XML := git-subtree.xml
 GIT_SUBTREE_TXT := git-subtree.txt
 GIT_SUBTREE_HTML := git-subtree.html
 
-all: $(GIT_SUBTREE)
+all:: $(GIT_SUBTREE)
 
 $(GIT_SUBTREE): $(GIT_SUBTREE_SH)
 	sed -e '1s|#!.*/sh|#!$(SHELL_PATH_SQ)|' $< >$@

2.1.0.344.gf63f03f