Target specific dependencies

[Iwan Aucamp]

 Hi

I'm using gnu make to build docbook xml documents - to both pdf and html

The chain used for this is

docbookxml -> pre-processing

preprocessed_files -> html -> html_folder -> html.zip
preprocessed_files -> fo -> pdf

For each step dependencies are generated.

Now the problem is - one makefile is used to build quite a few documents 
- and dependencies are generated regardless of what targets are being 
triggered because include is "global" and not linked to a target. So 
basically when you try to build html.zip the .fo is generated for 
calculating the dependencies of .pdf - and when an attempt is made to 
only build a pdf for one document (make foo.pdf) .fo and html is 
generated for all files.

This makes the whole process extremely sluggish - I have tried the 
following to get around this:

   # attempt 1
   target: .DUMMY:=$(eval include target.d.mk)

   ## the above does not work as intended as the eval is triggered
   regardless of target ...

   # attempt 2
   target:
        $(eval include target.d.mk)

   ## this does what is intended but results in following error:
   ## target.d.mk:1: *** prerequisites cannot be defined in command
   scripts.  Stop.

I'm all out of ideas here and have come to the conclusion that the only 
way to do this is to call make from targets which then includes the 
appropriate dependencies and builds the real target if necessary.

Am I missing something or is this the only way ?

If this is the only way - what is the process to request a feature in 
gnu make ? Should I post to bug-make list ? I think target specific 
includes will make life allot nicer.

Regards
Iwan Aucamp