make -b does what?

[Ray Ward]

In article <1990Feb22.042021.4936 at phri.nyu.edu> roy at phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
>lois at hpfcdc.HP.COM (Lois Gerber) writes:
>> This question is directed at OLD (and I mean OLD) Unix gurus :
>> Can anyone explain to me clearly what the -b option is for in make?
>	Beats the hell out of me.  I can't even find make in my (6th
>edition) Unix manual at all.  Did I get a defective manual?

I would suspect the -b came in somewhere around System III.  Steve Talbott's
_Managing Projects with Make_ ( O'Reilly and Assoc. 1-800-338-NUTS )
describes the option:

   The -b option is, in most implementations, on by default.  It
   assures backward compatibility with earlier versions of _make_,
   so that old description files continue to work.

I have no idea what the old description file format differences were.

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Ray Ward                                          Email:  uunet!ctbilbo!ray  
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