I'm pretty sure everything you're suggesting here is a workaround that breaks the intended features of Make. If a multiple-output step fails, I want the output

I'm pretty sure everything you're suggesting here is a workaround that breaks the intended features of Make. If a multiple-output step fails, I want the outputs to be deleted, and the rest of the dependencies to keep working so I don't have to rebuild everything from scratch. Whatever you're suggesting with dummy targets sounds like it's certainly not going to track the dependencies correctly. I already know that directories aren't tracked correctly as dependencies.