New feature: Post-requisites

[thutt]

Alejandro Colomar writes:
 > Hi,
 >
 > I'd like to suggest a new feature: post-requisites.
 >
 > As the word suggests, as pre-requisites are satisfied before a given
 > target, post-requisites would be satisfied _after_ a given target.
 >
 > Why would someone ever need that in a Makefile:
 >
 > In an install target for a library, you may want to run ldconfig(8)
 > after any install targets have executed.
 >
 > In an install target for the linux man-pages, you may want to run
 > mandb(8)  after any pages have been installed in the system.
 >
 > The proposed syntax would be similar to that of order only
 > prerequisites, but using '>' instead of '|':
 >
 > [
 > [...]
 >
 > $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir)/foo.3: man3/foo.3 | $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir) > update-mandb
 >      $(info INSTALL  $@)
 >      @$(INSTALL_DATA) -T $< $@
 >
 > $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir)/bar.3: man3/bar.3 | $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir) > update-mandb
 >      $(info INSTALL  $@)
 >      @$(INSTALL_DATA) -T $< $@
 >
 > .PHONY: update-mandb
 > update-mandb:
 >      $(info MANDB)
 >      @mandb
 >
 > .PHONY: install
 > install: $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir)/foo.3 $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir)/bar.3
 > ]
 >
 > So that `make install` would install foo.3 and bar.3, and after all of
 > the pages have been installed, mandb(8) would be run.
 > And `make /usr/local/share/man/man3/foo.3` would install foo.3, and
 > after it, it would run mandb(8).
 >
 > Does that make sense to you?


In your example, wouldn't the following accomplish the same thing?


update-mandb:  $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir)/foo.3 $(DESTDIR)$(man3dir)/bar.3