[fragmede]

I'm more confused as to why use .PHONY in so many places. Golang builds from .go files whos modification times are changed when written to, same as .c and .cpp files, so make is able to know when the go compiler needs to be called, or not.

[yencabulator]

Make absolutely does not understand all the scenarios for rebuild, and go build has much more complicated logic than that. For one, it's content-based not mtime-based. For another, a command needs rebuild if any of its dependencies change, not just its own source file. Make absolutely does not get that right for Go.