How to avoid "No such file or directory" Error for `make clean` Makefile target

Question

I have a Makefile that defines a .PHONY clean target for cleaning up .o files and executables, that target looks like:

... .PHONY : clean clean:     rm $(addprefix $(vq_DIR),$(vq_OBJS)) \        $(addprefix $(vq_DIR),vq) \        $(addprefix $(covq_DIR),$(covq_OBJS)) \        $(addprefix $(covq_DIR),covq) \        $(addprefix $(covq_2_DIR),$(covq_2_OBJS)) \        $(addprefix $(covq_2_DIR),covq_2) \        $(addprefix $(covq_2_DIR),$(test_OBJS)) \        $(addprefix $(covq_2_DIR),test) 

Everything works as it should, but when some of these files do not exist, rm raises an Error (No such file or directory), and the output says that the Makefile target failed, when it clearly did what I wanted.

Is there a good way to basically tell the rm command to "remove these files if they exist, and don't complain if they don't"? I looked up the manpage for rm, and found no such flag.

Edit: I actually didn't notice the description of the -f flag in the manpage, this is the solution.

Answer 1

Use rm -f (or even better $(RM), provided by built-in make rules, which can be found out using make -p) instead of rm in your cleanrule.