Possible make bug?

[Pete Johnson]

I am having a problem with a makefile which appears to be a bug with 
make. Unfortunately, I can't compile make from CVS because of problems 
with automake on Fedora Core 4. I have tried this with the 3.81beta2 
release though.

I have attached the makefile in question. To run the test, first make 
setup. This will create a list of source files and a dependency in a 
subdirectory. Next make the level4 target. Make complain about circular 
dependencies on dep.x. I don't see how this dependency is circular. On 
make 3.80, if you define funny to be 1 (make -f foo.mk level4 funny=1) 
the problem goes away. Not so with 3.81beta2. Also, if you change the 
target for %.3 or %.4 to depend on depdir/dep.x rather than picking it 
up from the vpath then everything works.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thanks,

-Pete

files = a.1 b.1 c.1 d.1

setup:
        mkdir -p depdir
        touch $(files) depdir/dep.x

command = echo $^ > $@

%.2: %.1 dep.x
        $(command)

%.3: %.2 dep.x
        $(command)

%.4: %.3
        $(command)

level4: $(files:.1=.4)

ifeq ($(funny),1)
level3: $(files:.1=.3)
endif

clean:
        rm -f $(files:.1=.2) $(files:.1=.3) $(files:.1=.4)

.PHONY: level4

vpath %.x depdir