-, or ->, or :-(...) :)

[Akim Demaille]

There is a feature that I regularly miss in Make: the ability to say
"includes".  That would dramatically help describing dependencies in
many different situations.

For instance, I wish I could say

main.texi -> sub1.texi sub2.texi

and then be able to have Make understand that

main.dvi: sub1.texi sub2.texi
main.info: sub1.texi sub2.texi
main.html: sub1.texi sub2.texi

etc.  I.e., whereever main.texi is a dep, sub1.texi and sub2.texi are
too.

In the present case Automake already provides some support, but
actually this support could be factored into something like ->, which
means "includes".


I thought about -> as a pun wrt <- from Haskell which is, with a bit
of imagination a fuzzy look as a clashing - into < gives a \in.

But something starting with ":" is more in the spirit of make.  Too
bad ":=" already has a meaning.



So, how about planning something like this in Automake?