If you're already breaking it into parts: how hard would it be to have the
Makefile rerun with a message and V=1 automatically on failure (and
obviously avoid make-looping)? My experience diving into the intricacies of
make is quite dated (old enough to vote now), and was so pleasant that we
invented our own replacement which I recall was pretty common at the time).
My first thought was to use a flag-dotfile, and my second thought was that
there must be a better way these days. :-)