Just because with default (ba)sh recipes it's usually unnecessary, to the point where people are surprised when learn make does this. You're working directly o

Just because with default (ba)sh recipes it's usually unnecessary, to the point where people are surprised when learn make does this. You're working directly on files so you don't need to carry any state in memory across lines. With python, this isn't really possible - even the most basic "open a file and write a value" spans two lines with state, so you need to write it in an unusual way, use backslashes to escape the newline, or use ONESHELL.