Re: Static multiple target rules

[Edward Welbourne]

> The only downsides to this I see are:
>
> 1: The duplicate file storage.  Probably not a big deal.
> 2: The extra processing time to archive and extract the files.  Again, 
> probably not a big deal.
> 3: The "why'd they do that?" questions coming from people unfamiliar 
> with the technique.

all valid problems.

> 4: It doesn't address that nagging feeling that make should be able to 
> support this.

Quite.

Another possibility crossed my mind over-night, with which I haven't
experimented, but that seems like it theoretically should work.
Replace the touch-file with a phony rule:

    yacc.ts: grammar.y
        yacc -d -v $^

    y.tab.h y.tab.c y.output .PHONY: yacc.ts

Because it's phony, and we never create it, it'll never exist and make
shouldn't care that no such file exists; because the three real
targets depend on it, any need for any of them shall force it to be
made (causing them to all exist); but if more than one of them needs
made, an individual run of make shall only make the phony once yet
still know that it's made it, so not need to run yacc again for the
sake of the others that depend on it.

But I may be confused about proper use of .PHONY - please experiment
and report your results !

        Eddy.