GNU make with many target directories

Question

I have to integrate the generation of many HTML files in an existing Makefile. The problem is that the HTML files need to reside in many different directories. My i

Answer 1

Your active implicit rule makes $(rootdir)/build/doc/2009/06/01/some.html depend on $(rootdir)/build/doc/2009/06/01/some.st. If $(rootdir)/build/doc/2009/06/01/some.st doesn't exist then the rule won't be used/found.

The commented out rule makes $(rootdir)/build/doc/2009/06/01/some.html depend on some.st.

One solution is to make you're source layout match your destination/result layout.

Another option is to create the rules as required with eval. But that will be quite complicated:

define HTML_template
 $(1) : $(basename $(1))
      cp $< $@
endef

$(foreach htmlfile,$(html),$(eval $(call HTML_template,$(htmlfile))))