make: *** No rule to make target 'dir/bar', needed by 'foobar'. Stop.

[Brian J. Murrell]

I wonder if somebody can explain to me why this Makefile:

foo:
        touch foo
        touch bar

%/:
        mkdir -p $@

dir/%: % | dir/
        rm -f $@
        ln $< $@

foobar: dir/foo dir/bar


doesn't work as one might think it should:

$ rm -rf dir foo bar; make foobar
touch foo
touch bar
mkdir -p dir/
rm -f dir/foo
ln foo dir/foo
make: *** No rule to make target 'dir/bar', needed by 'foobar'.  Stop.

Everything looks good for dir/bar to be created:

$ ls -l foo bar dir/
-rw-rw-r--. 1 brian brian    0 Jan 28 12:53 bar
-rw-rw-r--. 2 brian brian    0 Jan 28 12:53 foo

dir/:
total 0
-rw-rw-r--. 2 brian brian 0 Jan 28 12:53 foo

Subsequently trying to create dir/bar even works:

$ make dir/bar
rm -f dir/bar
ln bar dir/bar

Any ideas?  What am I missing?

Cheers,
b.

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