Re: Potential Bug: `.PHONY` targets and order-only prerequisites

[Paul Smith]

On Wed, 2022-05-18 at 10:22 -0700, Jacob Kopczynski wrote:
> I believe I understand. The name "order-only" is highly misleading
> and should be changed - it does considerably more than "only"
> "order"; the only thing it does not do is check the timestamp.

As described in the docs there are only two things a prerequisite can
do: impose order and effect the out-of-date decision of the target. 
Order-only prerequisites do one of them (impose order) and don't do the
other (effect out-of-date decisions).

What are the "considerably more" things that order-only prerequisites
do, besides impose order?

I do agree that the docs need clarification though.