Problem with dependencies

[Robert Bannocks]

Hi,

I hope the list can assist with a makefile problem.

I have the following makefile:

---------
all: $(MANUALFILES)
.PRECIOUS: %.txt-manual %.txt-override %.txt-auto %.txt-gen-extract
.SUFFIXES: .PRECIOIUS

TARCMD=/usr/bin/tar
BASENAMECMD=/usr/bin/basename

BASEDIR=/home/user/makefile-development
MANUALTARFILE=$(BASEDIR)/manual-tar-file.tar

MANUALFILES=$(BASEDIR)/1.txt-manual $(BASEDIR)/2.txt-manual 
$(BASEDIR)/3.txt-manual
manual-tar:
            $(TARCMD) -Pcf $(MANUALTARFILE) $(MANUALFILES)

make-manual:
            for file in $(MANUALFILES) ; do echo $$file> $$file ; done

SCPCMD=/usr/bin/scp
SERVERHOST=server.domainname
SERVERPATH=/export/file/manual-tar-file.tar
prereq:
            $(SCPCMD) -p $(SERVERHOST):$(SERVERPATH) $(BASEDIR)

%.txt-manual: prereq
            $(TARCMD) -xf $(MANUALTARFILE) `$(BASENAMECMD) address@hidden
-----

Which seems fine to me but when I run make I get as follows I get:

make: Nothing to be done for `all’.

But in tact none of the files (in the MANUALFILES variable) exist (neither does 
the tar file) despite the MANUALFILES being the target of all.
However, when I run make on the individual files I get:

make /home/user/makefile-development/1.txt-manual -n
/usr/bin/scp -p server.domainname:/export/file/manual-tar-file.tar 
/home/user/makefile-development
/usr/bin/tar -xf /home/user/makefile-development/manual-tar-file.tar 
`/usr/bin/basename /home/user/makefile-development/1.txt-manual`

What am I misunderstanding
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