Espero ver archivos foo1 y foo3 creado por el archivo MAKE a continuación. Sin embargo, solo un archivo foo3 es creado. A mí me parece que la receta enlatada make-foo simplemente es ignorado por make. El resultado de la depuración de los objetivos foo1 y foo2 (receta vacía) es idéntico.

# why canned recipe doesn't work ?
# http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Canned-Recipes
define make-foo =
echo making $@
touch $@
endef

.PHONY: all
all: foo1 foo2 foo3

# foo1 is not created, but why ?
.PHONY: foo1
foo1:
    $(make-foo)

# debug output similar to foo1
.PHONY: foo2
foo2:

# this works
.PHONY: foo3
foo3:
    echo making $@
    touch $@

Marca de ejecución:

xxxx@xxxx:/dev/shm$ make -dRr
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i686-pc-linux-gnu
Reading makefiles...
Reading makefile `makefile'...
Updating makefiles....
 Considering target file `makefile'.
  Looking for an implicit rule for `makefile'.
  No implicit rule found for `makefile'.
  Finished prerequisites of target file `makefile'.
 No need to remake target `makefile'.
Updating goal targets....
Considering target file `all'.
 File `all' does not exist.
  Considering target file `foo1'.
   File `foo1' does not exist.
   Finished prerequisites of target file `foo1'.
  Must remake target `foo1'.
  Successfully remade target file `foo1'.
  Considering target file `foo2'.
   File `foo2' does not exist.
   Finished prerequisites of target file `foo2'.
  Must remake target `foo2'.
  Successfully remade target file `foo2'.
  Considering target file `foo3'.
   File `foo3' does not exist.
   Finished prerequisites of target file `foo3'.
  Must remake target `foo3'.
echo making foo3
Putting child 0x0914c5f0 (foo3) PID 3132 on the chain.
Live child 0x0914c5f0 (foo3) PID 3132 
making foo3
Reaping winning child 0x0914c5f0 PID 3132 
touch foo3
Live child 0x0914c5f0 (foo3) PID 3133 
Reaping winning child 0x0914c5f0 PID 3133 
Removing child 0x0914c5f0 PID 3133 from chain.
  Successfully remade target file `foo3'.
 Finished prerequisites of target file `all'.
Must remake target `all'.
Successfully remade target file `all'.

Desaparecido foo1:

xxxx@xxxx:/dev/shm$ ll foo*
-rw-r--r-- 1 xxxx xxxx 0 2011-02-17 20:04 foo3