I second this, using CFLAGS=-MMD or -MD makes writing a Makefile a lot more simpler. This also gets rid of the need to add a rule for building dependency files and you can rely on the built-in rules (see `make -p`) to build object files.
A good Makefile should have any rules for building object files if you're using a language like C or C++, which Make has built-in rules for. If using another language, adding a few generic rules should be enough.
Here's a Makefile template I've been using for some time. It may look complicated initially but only the first 70 or so lines are the actual beef. The rest of the Makefile is helpful rules for tooling (tags, cscope, coverage, profile) but that doesn't work too well at the moment. It also supports out-of-source-tree builds (using vpath to locate source files, object files and other outputs go under $PWD, vpath is does not work for object files).