I don't think that's a real problem, these files don't change often. It certainly doesn't justify adding a complicated infrastructure to deal with it.
Indeed, I said, and I let it go. But thinking a little more about it, I don't see how you solve the problem with the manual stuff. As I understand it, the problem we need to solve is as follows: -- store rule in Make.rules.in -- handle multiple .rc files per Makefile -- rebuild .res file automatically if .rc or .bmp change
Now, in my proposal we have:
In Make.rules
.rc.extract: bin2res $< && touch $@
%.res: %.rc %.extract $(WRC) -o $@ $<
In make depend:
bitmap1.bmp bitmap2.bmp bitmap3.bmp: rsrc.extract
rsrc.res: bitmap1.bmp bitmap2.bmp bitmap3.bmp
rsrc.extract: rsrc.rc
The only complication here is the .extract file which allows us to split the dependencies from the rules. The complicated stuff are the dependencies, but you need those anyway. A simple marker file is a small price to pay for the convenience... If you think we can keep it simpler, can you please tell me a bit more of what you have in mind? How are we going to use that $(RCBINARIES) if we have more than one .rc file per Makefile?