Re: Section 3.8 of the info manual not respected

[Philip Guenther]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Anthony Shipman <address@hidden> wrote:
> I've tried the example in section 3.8 Overriding Part of Another Makefile.
> i.e.
>
> foo:
>        frobnicate > foo
>
> %: force
>       address@hidden(MAKE) -f Makefile $@
>
> force: ;
>
> The command 'make foo' results in
>
> make[1]: Makefile: No such file or directory
> make[1]: *** No rule to make target `Makefile'.  Stop.
> make: *** [GNUmakefile] Error 2


The paragraph just above the example says this:
----
   For example, if you have a makefile called `Makefile' that says how
to make the target `foo' (and other targets), you can write a makefile
called `GNUmakefile' that contains:
----

I.e., you *first* must have a file "Makefile" in the current
directory.  The error message you got says that you don't have that,
so of course the example doesn't work.

Since you don't have a Makefile already, why are you trying to use an
example for overriding an existing makefile?


> An implicit rule search is performed for the target GNUmakefile. This is not
> expected.

While GNU make will automatically try to rebuild its makefile, that's both
A) completely expected, and
B) not at all related the error message you quoted.


Philip Guenther