Re: use .PHONY in Makefile.in.in

[Bruno Haible]

R. Bernstein wrote:
> Makefile.in.in and I noticed that there are a couple of targets that
> might be classified as .PHONY, in particular all, all-yes and all-no.

Thanks for the report. But this is not all. I think all the following
would classify as "phony":
  all
  all-yes
  all-no
  $(DOMAIN).pot-update
  install
  install-exec
  install-data
  install-data-no
  install-data-yes
  install-strip
  installdirs
  installdirs-exec
  installdirs-data
  installdirs-data-no
  installdirs-data-yes
  installcheck
  uninstall
  uninstall-exec
  uninstall-data
  uninstall-data-no
  uninstall-data-yes
  check
  info
  dvi
  ps
  pdf
  html
  tags
  ctags
  mostlyclean
  clean
  distclean
  maintainer-clean
  dist
  distdir
  dist2
  update-po

With all these phony targets, the Makefile.in.in would get even more
complicated and harder to maintain. Especially the rule
"A phony target should not be a prerequisite of a real target file"
is likely to cause trouble. 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.)

Bruno