On Sun, 2012-10-28 at 11:10 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> > Preserve intermediate .c files in coverage mode
> >
> > The introduction of the .y -> .c pattern rule causes some .c files such
> > as bootparse.c to be considered intermediate files in the .y -> .c -> .o
> > rule chain, which make would automatically delete. But in coverage
> > mode, the processing tools such as genhtml need those files, so mark
> > them as "precious" so that make preserves them.
>
> [ blink... ] I'd vote for making them precious all the time. No such
> behavioral change was discussed or agreed to,
This is standard, default make behavior. It only showed up here because
the coverage processing doesn't list all the files it needs in make
rules.
> and I'm concerned about
> possible side effects, for instance losing files that you don't have the
> tools to rebuild when working from a distributed tarball.
I don't think this is a problem because distprep explicitly lists the
files it builds.