Make "hooks" (Re: Patch to add lang.generated-manpages...)

[Zack Weinberg <zack at codesourcery dot com>]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 12:01:45AM +0000, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> This patch makes language subdirectories use a lang.generated-manpages
> target, a better way of ensuring they're only built when the tools are
> available than each directory checking $(GENERATED_MANPAGES) itself.

Here's a bigger question: Why do we need to have these hook rules in
the first place?  The only explanation anywhere is this bit of the
Makefile

# Each language is linked in with a series of hooks (since we can't use `::'
# targets).  The name of each hooked is "lang.${target_name}" (eg: lang.info).
# Configure computes and adds these here.

and I see no reason why we can't use :: targets.  Imake uses them, so
they ought to be portable enough.

zw