Re: how to pass the error status of a submake to a parent make

[Philip Guenther]

On 5/27/06, Geraldin Arthy <address@hidden> wrote:
> I want to know how to pass the error status of a submake to the parent make
> which means even if the submake has errors the parent make should exit and
> it should not build other directories.
...
> So I want to know how to pass the return code of a submake to the parent
> make?

By default, if any of the commands for a target fail then make will
exit with a non-zero status.  There are a few ways to tell make to
ignore the exit status of some or all commands (c.f. the GNU make info
pages, section "5.5 Errors in Commands").  Alternatively, the commands
in the makefile may have been written such that they always return
success.  For example, in this rule:

all:
       $(MAKE) -C subdir all  ||  echo "subdir failed"

the command invoked won't fail unless both the sub-make _and_ the 'echo' fail.


If the above isn't sufficient to let you see the problem in your
makefile, then you'll need to post the rule w/commands that are
involved from the makefile where the error stops propagating.


Philip Guenther