Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

Since 8650c6298c (doc lint: make "lint-docs" non-.PHONY, 2021-10-15), we
put the output for gitlink linter into .build/lint-docs/gitlink. There
are order-only dependencies to create the sequence of subdirs like:

  .build/lint-docs: | .build
          $(QUIET)mkdir $@
  .build/lint-docs/gitlink: | .build/lint-docs
          $(QUIET)mkdir $@

where each level has to depend on the prior one (since the parent
directory must exist for us to create something inside it). But the
"howto" and "config" subdirectories of gitlink have the wrong
dependency; they depend on "lint-docs", not "lint-docs/gitlink".

Thanks.

I wonder if we can somehow avoid this unwieldy chain of commands,
perhaps with using "mkdir -p" somewhere, or make the lint scripts
create the necessary leading paths.  From the looks of the tail end
of Documentation/Makefile, the latter may be the cleaner solution.