Fwd: Making makefiles with primarily phony targets more friendly

[Britton Kerin]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Britton Kerin <britton.kerin@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: Making makefiles with primarily phony targets more friendly
To: Katherine Pata <me@kitty.sh>

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 11:44 AM Katherine Pata <me@kitty.sh> wrote:

I often find myself using makefiles to handle things like project linting, container images, various scripts, initiating tests, and other misc tasks. Sometimes these include tasks that have real dependencies that make should keep track of, but often the vast majority of targets are phony.

Something like --reverse-phony or a variable like .GENUINE or .REAL that is mutually exclusive with .PHONY would be really helpful.

I'm not sure I like that exact solution since I don't have mostly phony targets. But I have enough that some more compact and less repetitive syntax would be really convenient.

Britton