Target-specific Variables as Prerequisites in a Makefile

Question

I'm trying to write a GNU make Makefile which has a load of similar targets, where the build commands vary slightly between them. I'm trying to use target-specific variables to represent these variations. Some of these variable values refer to files I want to use as prerequisites. For example:

target_1:special_filename=target1_prereq
target_2:special_filename=target2_prereq

target_1 target_2: common_filename $(special_filename)
    do_something common_filename --a-weird-option=$(special_filename)

When I call 'make target_1', I want it to make target1_prereq if it doesn't exist. At the moment, it doesn't seem to use target1_prereq as a prerequisite, even though the build command (do_something) is called with the right parameter.

I'm using GNU Make 3.80.

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Edit: A few more complications from the real system. Some of the variables are themselves based on the values of other variables. Manually specifying the prerequisites wouldn't scale. A slightly more complicated example:

target_1:special_filename_base=target1_prereq
target_2:special_filename_base=target2_prereq

some_filename_a = $(special_filename_base).exta
some_filename_b = $(special_filename_base).extb

target_1 target_2: common_filename $(special_filename_b) $(special_filename_a)
    do_something common_filename --a-weird-option=$(special_filename_a) --second=$(special_filename_b)

Answer 1

As a simple workaround:

target_1:special_filename=target1_prereq
target_1:target1_prereq
target_2:special_filename=target2_prereq
target_2:target2_prereq

target_1 target_2: common_filename $(special_filename)
    do_something common_filename --a-weird-option=$(special_filename)

There is some redundancy, but it is localized, so it's not too bad.

Answer 2

A target-specific variable is defined only in the target's commands (or in other target-specific assignments); it can't be used as one of the target's prereqs. I don't think there's a clean way to do what you want in Make, but there are several kludgey approaches, such as the following:

EXTENSIONS = .exta .extb
target_1: $(addprefix target1_prereq,$(EXTENSIONS))
target_2: $(addprefix target2_prereq,$(EXTENSIONS))

target_1 target_2: common_filename
    do_something common_filename --a-weird-option=$(filter %.exta,$^) --second=$(filter %.extb,$^)