Hi folks, thanks for all the hard work.

Any chance of this one being fixed any time soon? After all, pattern rules are the only way of telling make about a program that produces two or more output files. This bug means that it is necessary to run make twice or more when lex (say) is present during a build.

I have a build where many targets are built by a single invocation of a custom tool. I haven't really found a nice work around for this bug.

Consider this:

  $ cat Makefile
  1st := a.1st b.1st c.1st
  2nd := ${1st:.1st=.2nd}

  .PHONY: all
  all: ${2nd}

  a.% b.% c.%: # All the *.1st files are created by a single invocation
    touch ${1st}

  ${2nd}: %.2nd: %.1st
    cat $< >$@

  $ make
  touch a.1st b.1st c.1st
  cat a.1st >a.2nd
  cat b.1st >b.2nd
  cat c.1st >c.2nd
  $ make
  make: Nothing to be done for `all'.

Fine. All files are up to date.

  $ rm b.1st
  $ make
  touch a.1st b.1st c.1st
  cat b.1st >b.2nd
  cat c.1st >c.2nd

Urk! a.2nd is out of date with respect to a.1st. We need to run make again.

  $ make
  cat a.1st >a.2nd

Hmmm.