Heredoc in a Makefile?

Another GNU Make solution.

You can do it using the define and export commands as follows:

define GITIGNOREDS
*.o
depend
endef

SRCS = $(wildcard [a-z]*.c)
EXES = $(SRCS:.c=)


export GITIGNOREDS
.gitignore: $(SRCS)
    echo $(EXES) | sed 's/ /\n/g' > $@
    echo "$$GITIGNOREDS" >> $@

You have to be careful of make expansions (i.e. $(x)) inside the define block though.