[bug #42125] Explicit rules do not support multiple targets

[Paul D. Smith]

Follow-up Comment #5, bug #42125 (project make):

I understand why you may consider it counterintuitive based on the naming, but
I don't understand why you consider it unfortunate.

Suppose that we made the change in the implementation that you suggest: that
would mean that the targets listed in the static pattern rule would not be
created as known files in make's database; instead they would simply be listed
as a set of names hanging off of that pattern rule that would be checked
before allowing that rule to be applied (as an example implementation).

This would mean two things: first, that those targets won't be considered
"known files" during computations such as intermediate file detection etc.,
and second that make would go through a complete pattern rule search when it
wanted to build those targets, which means make could choose some _other_
pattern rule to build those targets, if that pattern rule matched better.

To me, this latter behavior would be incredibly confusing, and incorrect: I
can't imagine any user would look at the syntax of a static pattern rule and
consider that make would use some OTHER rule, than the one explicitly listed
there, to build that target.

But maybe you had something different in mind: why you want static pattern
rules to be considered pattern rules?

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