This is a re-log of a problem first described in issue #43310.

The problem is question is reproduced by the following makefile:

.USESHELL :

all :: foo.dll

foo.dll : foo.obj
	copy foo.obj foo.dll

all :: foo.xs

.c.obj :
	copy $*.c $*.obj

.xs.c :
	copy $*.xs $*.c

foo.xs ::
	echo foo>foo.xs

This almost works OK, but tries to delete foo.xs at the end of the process and
fails because it has already deleted it earlier.  Here's the output that I get:

echo foo>foo.xs
copy foo.xs foo.c
        1 file(s) copied.
del  foo.xs
copy foo.c foo.obj
        1 file(s) copied.
del  foo.c
copy foo.obj foo.dll
        1 file(s) copied.
del  foo.xs
Could Not Find C:\Temp\dmake-43310\foo.xs

If I remove the "all :: foo.xs" line then the extraneous deletion is not
attempted and all is well.

An even stranger thing happens if I changed the "foo.xs ::" line to just "foo.xs
:" instead.  In this case, the extra deletion is again attempted, but this time
succeeds because foo.xs actually gets remade first!  Here's the output:

echo foo>foo.xs
copy foo.xs foo.c
        1 file(s) copied.
del  foo.xs
copy foo.c foo.obj
        1 file(s) copied.
del  foo.c
copy foo.obj foo.dll
        1 file(s) copied.
echo foo>foo.xs
del  foo.xs