12.14.5 Tru64 make Creates Prerequisite Directories Magically

When a prerequisite is a subdirectory of VPATH, Tru64 make creates it in the current directory.

$ mkdir -p foo/bar build
$ cd build
$ cat >Makefile <<END
VPATH = ..
all: foo/bar
END
$ make
mkdir foo
mkdir foo/bar

This can yield unexpected results if a rule uses a manual VPATH search as presented before.

VPATH = ..
all : foo/bar
        command `test -d foo/bar || echo ../`foo/bar

The above command is run on the empty ‘foo/bar’ directory that was created in the current directory.