My consistency check in JDK-8199749 broke the build if using make 3.81. We use make 4.0 most of the time internally so I didn't test with older make versions.

$$(if $$(wildcard $$@), , $$(error $$@ was not created for $$<))

The check assumes that a make function in a recipe will only be evaluated when the recipe starts executing. This doesn't seem like the case in the older make version.

The check either needs to be removed completely or put under make version conditional.