So the man page for glib-compile-resources suggests the following like can be used, so that when building test.gresource we automatically depend on all files are included in test.gresource.xml:

test.gresource: test.gresource.xml $(shell $(GLIB_COMPILE_RESOURCES) --generate-dependencies test.gresource.xml)

The problem with this line is that $(shell ...) is evaluated when the makefile is read and not when the this target is run.

In the case that one of the files in test.gresource.xml is generated from another file, then it will not be available when this command is run.

I suggest to change the semantics of glib-compile-resources such that it does not check if files are really present when it is run with --generate-dependencies