Re: use .PHONY in Makefile.in.in

[R. Bernstein]

Bruno Haible writes:
 > With all these phony targets, the Makefile.in.in would get even more
 > complicated and harder to maintain. 

Okay - your call.

 > Especially the rule
 > "A phony target should not be a prerequisite of a real target file"
 > is likely to cause trouble. 

I don't think this is so much a rule as it is a heuristic. The GNU Make
manual continues:

  if it is, its commands are run every time make goes to update that
  file.  As long as a phony target is never a prerequisite of a real
  target, the phony target commands will be executed only when the
  phony target is a specified goal.

In fact I believe there are times when this behavior is exactly what's
wanted. In particular if you are writing tracing or debugging routines
via GNU Make commands. :-)

 > Or does GNU make emit a warning when this
 > rule is violated? (I think not, because then it would have to emit
 > a warning for every "force" rule.)

You are correct.