Egg and chicken problem when auto generate default makefile

Question

Can't understand next moment in the official GMU Make documentation (3.5 How Makefiles Are Remade)

If you do not specify any makefiles to be read with ‘-f’ or ‘--file’ options, make will try the default makefile names; see What Name to Give Your Makefile. Unlike makefiles explicitly requested with ‘-f’ or ‘--file’ options, make is not certain that these makefiles should exist. However, if a default makefile does not exist but can be created by running make rules, you probably want the rules to be run so that the makefile can be used.

From which make rule default makefile can be created if we don't specify any makefile with -f and none of default makefiles are present ? Can anybody give an example of that situation ?

Answer 1

In the past, the default makefile could be generated from the built-in rules that automatically check-out from version control system. The GNU make has built-in rules to checkout from RCS and SCCS, but nowadays no one is using those version control systems anymore.

One way to activate this feature was to create an empty directory, and setup a symlink to the RCS or SCCS repository. Once the symlink was setup, make will use the correct command (co for RCS, and get for SCCS) to checkout the latest version of the file.

Bottom line, IMHO, the feature is no longer relevant.