Can't start debugger if no targets are defined

[deliciouslytyped]

I want to debug the following Makefile (the actual problem is irrelevant; the make-dirs call expands to nothing):

define _make-dir
$1/.dum: $(not-dir $1)/.dum
        mkdir $(dir $@)
        touch $(dir $@)/.dum
endef

# we dont try to create/depend on /.dum
define make-dir
$(if $(not-dir $1),$(call _make-dir,$1),)
endef

$(call make-dir,test/)

Running remake results in the following:

$ remake -X
Reading makefiles...
Updating makefiles...
remake: *** No targets.  Stop.

As a workaround, a dummy target can be added, to get into the REPL, but it would be nice if this wasn't a problem when wanting to debug macro libraries or such.

[rocky]

The example given isn't very compelling. How likely is it that someone will write a Makefile with no usable target? And if this is totally artificial or for testing, then creating a couple additional lines doesn't seem that hard.

[deliciouslytyped]

It's not critical, just inconvenient.