Makefile always running target

Question

I may miss something very obvious with this Makefile:

convert: devel/bar
  touch convert

init: devel/foo
  echo \'init\'

devel/foo:
  mkdir -p devel
  touc         


        

Answer 1

There probably is no file named init? So it tries to update devel/bar (since it depends on init).

Consider using .PHONY

Answer 2

You're not creating a file called init, so init is always out-of-date. Therefore everything that depends on it is always out-of-date.