Re: [HELP] PHONY pattern rule makes the file w/ the same name

[Paul Smith]

On Wed, 2023-10-04 at 07:40 -0700, Bahman Movaqar wrote:
> To make matters more complicated, in the previous snippet, if I
> declare `echo.%' as below (w/o any pattern-rule prerequisite) then
> Make behaves as expected.

Sorry but I don't really understand the problem.  Maybe you can explain
it more clearly: provide the shortest, simplest repro case and show
both what happened and what you expected to see, and explain why you
expected it.

However, I want to push back on this understanding of .PHONY:

> To my mind, whenever a target is marked as PHONY it is supposed to
> simply ignore files with the same name.

That's not really right.  What .PHONY means is that make will _always_
rebuild that target (if it is considered), regardless of whether or not
the file exists on the disk or whether it's out of date with respect to
its prerequisites.

It also means that implicit rules are not searched, for PHONY targets.

See:
https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Phony-Targets.html

> Prerequisites of .PHONY are always interpreted as literal target
> names, never as patterns (even if they contain ‘%’ characters). To
> always rebuild a pattern rule consider using a “force target” (see
> Rules without Recipes or Prerequisites).

and:

> The implicit rule search (see Using Implicit Rules) is skipped for
> .PHONY targets. This is why declaring a target as .PHONY is good for
> performance, even if you are not worried about the actual file
> existing.

I don't know if this information helps you understand the behavior
you're seeing.