Meshery: [CI] Skip make targets if already invoked once

[nitishm]

Current Behavior
All makefile targets are run every time a top level make target is invoked. This can slow down the build process significantly and lead to issues in non-idempotent make target actions.

Desired Behavior

To skip prerun targets, that do not need to be run again, each target step should drop a turd (dummy artifact) or a real artifact. If the artifact exists, we can safely skip the step and continue onwards to other targets.

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Resources
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21745816/makefile-make-dependency-only-if-file-doesnt-exist

Alternatives / Additional Context
I am sure there are other ways to achieve the same goals but since my Makefile-fu is weak I cannot find a better way to do it.

CC @kanishkarj

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[kushthedude]

Hi @nitishm @kanishkarj , I don't get the issue. If you are saying to skip make command if dependency is already set-up then it is obsolete, as both npm & go-modules checks the manifest of the dependencies before actually fetching them.

[nitishm]

According to @kanishkarj there are a lot of targets that are rerun everytime you call a target with other dependencies. Since I am not to privy with the structure yet, I assumed that some dependencies being rebuilt can slow down the process.

[nitishm]

Also see - 10.4 Chains of Implicit Rules in https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Chained-Rules

[kanishkarj]

@leecalcote Suggestions here?

[kushthedude]

Also see - 10.4 Chains of Implicit Rules in https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Chained-Rules

I still don't get it, only recurring make command is go mod tidy which is efficient not fetch deps everytime it's run and same for npm engine ?

[leecalcote]

Thanks for this, @nitishm! Whether its a reduction of duplicative command executions or a considerate organization of current command groups and their names, our Makefiles need some love.

[kanishkarj]

Do we want this instead ?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31492675/node-build-from-makefile-only-if-source-changed

In this way what we'd have is if ran make run-local, we'll actually build only if the source files have been changed, if not we used the built version. It would be really helpful in the case of building ui too.