Makefile dependencies don't work for phony target

Question

Here is a reduced version of my Makefile:

.PHONY: all 

all: src/server.coffee
  mkdir -p bin
  ./node_modules/.bin/coffee -c -o bin src/server.coffee
         


        

Answer 1

According to the Make documentation:

The prerequisites of the special target .PHONY are considered
to be phony targets. When it is time to consider such a target, 
make will run its recipe unconditionally, regardless of whether 
a file with that name exists or what its last-modification time is.

http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Special-Targets.html

Make runs the recipe of PHONY targets unconditionally - prerequisites don't matter.