debian: remove .PHONY line completely This does not work in the case of implicit pattern matching rules as used by dh. Consider this example from Geoffrey Thomas: $ ls -l total 16 -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 17 Aug 16 20:27 blue.c -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 17 Aug 16 20:27 green.c -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 35 Aug 16 20:26 Makefile -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 17 Aug 16 20:27 red.c $ cat Makefile %: %.c gcc -o $@ $< .PHONY: blue $ make red gcc -o red red.c $ make green gcc -o green green.c $ make blue make: Nothing to be done for blue'. The Make manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Phony-Targets) says Since it knows that phony targets do not name actual files that could be remade from other files, make skips the implicit rule search for phony targets (see Implicit Rules). Thanks to the good folks on #debian-mentors on OFTC for instruction and explanation in these matters.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os, time, errno, signal

# Kill off any leftover daemon processes
try:
    fp = open(os.environ['DAEMON_PIDS'])
    for line in fp:
        try:
            pid = int(line)
        except ValueError:
            continue
        try:
            os.kill(pid, 0)
            os.kill(pid, signal.SIGTERM)
            for i in range(10):
                time.sleep(0.05)
                os.kill(pid, 0)
            os.kill(pid, signal.SIGKILL)
        except OSError, err:
            if err.errno != errno.ESRCH:
                raise
    fp.close()
except IOError:
    pass