multiple targets

[Phillip Lord]

While writing a make file, I've just hit the situation where I need to
write a rule of the form:


a b c d e: x y z
    generate_abcde


Unfortunately, this doesn't work as the semantics are equivalent to the
rules where the targets are separate -- that is generate_abcde gets run
multiple times.

I've done some poking around, and found that a couple of solutions,
either with pattern rules or otherwise by creating an intermediate file,
as described here:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-make/2007-04/msg00021.html

My understanding is that there is no other way to do this, but I was
wondering why this was the case; would it be possible to support to make
for this directly?

Phil