This does not directly answer your question... My general advice is to not try to find ways to have directories as targets or as dependencies of rules.
One pattern that I find addresses many use cases is to unconditionally shell out to create all directories that will be used in the makefile, as: $(shell mkdir -p dir) > -----Original Message----- > From: Help-make <help-make-bounces+mec=stowers....@gnu.org> On > Behalf Of Brian J. Murrell > Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 12:10 > To: help-make@gnu.org > Subject: make: *** No rule to make target 'dir/bar', needed by 'foobar'. > Stop. > > 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.
