When there is no line starting with a test if ..., it is unnecessary to write && \ at the end. In case of an error in a command line without && \ at the end, Makefile stop before the next line. So there is no added value to make the next action conditionnal to the success of the previous action because it is the standard way Make run.
Moreover, it is disturbing when you want to customize the Makefile. I wanted to remove the depmod with one sed because I do it only once after all modules are compilated and not after every separate module. Because of the && \ in the line before, I was forced to replace 'depmod -a by a command wich do nothing. another remark GNU make manual : http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_chapter/make_4.html#SEC51 say that it is not necessary to generate dependencies " With old make programs, it was traditional practice to use this compiler feature to generate prerequisites on demand with a command like `make depend'. That command would create a file `depend' containing all the automatically-generated prerequisites; then the makefile could use include to read them in (see section 3.3 Including Other Makefiles). In GNU make, the feature of remaking makefiles makes this practice obsolete--you need never tell make explicitly to regenerate the prerequisites, because it always regenerates any makefile that is out of date. See section 3.7 How Makefiles Are Remade. " So the checkdep and dep targets (and related commands ) are not necessary.
