@neauoire The exceptionally shitty thing about Make is that there are SO many variants that extend the original make program written by Feldman in incompatible ways.
Feldman wrote a paper in '78 on how his original make works. Knowing that you like portability, this is probably the make variant you want to target:
http://ewald.cas.usf.edu/teaching/2004F/5156/packet/packet2.docs/05.make.pdf
@cr1901 wow, thank you for linking this 👀