Not a big deal, it looks more like a defectlet on the MMS side. MMK accepts a newline (and/or a comment) as a delimiter for "depends_on" while MMS does not. But both accept such a delimiter for a colon:
$ mms/id
%MMS-I-IDENT, MMS V3.3-4 � Digital Equipment Corporation 1989, 1998. All rights
reserved. � Electronic Data Systems Limited 1995, 1998
$
$ mms/descr=sys$input
target :#
show time
^Z
show time
15-JUN-2015 13:56:50
$ mms/descr=sys$input
target depends_on#
show time
target depends_on
%MMS-W-DRVPARSERR, Parser error: "syntax error" in file SYS$INPUT:.;, line 1.
%MMS-F-DRVBADPARSE, Parser detected a fatal syntax error in the description file.
$ mmk/id
%MMK-I-IDENT, this is the MMK Make Utility V5.0
-MMK-I-COPYRIGHT, Copyright (c) 2008, Matthew Madison.
Copyright (c) 2013, Endless Software Solutions.
See LICENSE.TXT in distribution kit for license information.
$
$ mmk/descr=sys$input
target :#
show time
^Z
show time
15-JUN-2015 13:57:34
$ mmk/descr=sys$input
target depends_on#
show time
^Z
show time
15-JUN-2015 13:57:53
$
Not a big deal, it looks more like a defectlet on the MMS side. MMK accepts a newline (and/or a comment) as a delimiter for "depends_on" while MMS does not. But both accept such a delimiter for a colon: