By declaring the subdirectories as phony targets (you must do this asthe subdirectory obviously always exists; otherwise it won't be built)you can remove these problems:     SUBDIRS = foo bar baz     .PHONY: subdirs $(SUBDIRS)     subdirs: $(SUBDIRS)     $(SUBDIRS):             $(MAKE) -C $@     foo: baz   Here we've also declared that the `foo' subdirectory cannot be builtuntil after the `baz' subdirectory is complete; this kind ofrelationship declaration is particularly important when attemptingparallel builds.