Target driven rule building

[Oliver Burghard]

Hello, 


I have the following problem, that I am sure other people had as well and 
wonder if it is possible with make or if somebody knows a different program 
well suited instead. 

I have a collection of files >100 that I need to process via multiple steps >10 
into several results (some depend on multiple/all input files). 

Now the processing rules also depend on parameters, that depend on the source 
and target file names. 

I want to describe the build process as simple as possible. Formulating all 
rules is no choice. Implicit rules are no 'good' choice as their pattern 
matching is too weak. Targets differ in more than one place. 

What would be much better are rules automatically build for targets matching a 
regular expression. And optimally the rule would depend on the target name and 
on 'properties' assigned to the source files - many can possibly be inferred 
from its name. Also I could use hash maps to match part of file names onto 
parameter sets. 

Is it formulated well enough to be understood? Any help or link how this can be 
implemented in a nice (manageable) way is appreciated. 


Thanks, 
Oliver Burghard