pedantic nitpickery: difference between "goal" and "target"?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  junior colleague who is just learning make and is going through make
manual asked me the other day (regarding section 2.3 in manual) about
this passage:

"By default, make starts with the first target (not targets whose
names start with ‘.’). This is called the default goal. (Goals are the
targets that make strives ultimately to update ..."

  the question was, "what is the difference between a 'goal' and a
'target'?"

  i wasn't quite sure ... i didn't think there was any substantive
difference. the best i could come up is that targets define what *can*
be invoked, while the goal is the target you're currently *trying* to
update, but that sounded pretty lame.

  is there a better explanation? or am i overthinking this?

rday

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                         http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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