[nrclark]

If you don't want them, don't use them. Make doesn't need you to produce actual files called 'clean', 'build', etc. you don't even have to do anything special unless your build folder has actual files called those things (in which case, you could declare them as phonies).

From Make's point of view, they're just target names. Make doesn't care whether or not a target produces any files. Targets can satisfy dependencies for other targets, as can files on the filesystem.