Do: .DELETE_ON_ERROR for directory purposes

GNU Make includes a special target named .DELETE_ON_ERROR

. If included in your Makefile, Make will remove any target whose build sequence exits with a nonzero return status. This is useful so that subsequent calls to Make do not assume that the target was well-formed.

Here's a dummy example.

.DELETE_ON_ERROR:

out.dat:    in.dat
            touch out.dat
            false

      

        
        
        
      

    

Because false

it gives a nonzero return value, the build fails and Make removes the target out.dat

. This is advertising and expected behavior. However, this behavior does not seem to persist when the target is a directory. Let's consider another dummy example.

.DELETE_ON_ERROR:

outdir/:    in.dat
            mkdir outdir/
            false

      

        
        
        
      

    

In this case, the build will fail, but Make does not remove the directory outdir

. Is there a way I can give the Make command to do this?