name is the fully expanded path and will never match
because the raw makefile has the $(OUT_DIR) var in the
target names.

at this point $name could be a full path target or just a pipeline step
name.
for instance:

vcf1 has a dependency named $(OUT_DIR)/vcfs/chr1/chr1.merged.vcf.OK
which is expanded to:
/net/wonderland/home/cgillies/assembly/analyses/Fluidigm/gotcloud/624/vcfs/chr1/chr1.merged.vcf.OK

so if $name begins with the expanded path of OUT_DIR i could just strip
it just recollapse it back to the variable string and then search
against that string?

yep, that worked out well enough. just needed to account for the point
where there are no dependencies to parse out.
need to recurse through the dependencies for a given target