Re: capturing make's exit status

[Paul D. Smith]

%% Nolan Ring <address@hidden> writes:

  nr> OS is Solaris 5.9
  nr> make is 3.8.0

  nr> Is there some way for me to capture the exit status from make at the 
  nr> time that it fails?  Or set a flag?  

  nr> My Makefile is pretty basic:

  nr> all: versionfile $(BUILDDIRS)
  nr>         @(for i in $(MAKEDIRS); do cd $$i; echo "Making in $$i" ;make -f 
Makefile.sun; cd ..; done)

This is a bad way to invoke submakes.

Do it this way instead:

 all: versionfile $(BUILDDIRS)

 .PHONY: $(BUILDDIRS)
 $(BUILDDIRS):
         @cd $@ && $(MAKE) -f Makefile.sun

Comments:

  * NEVER use "make" to invoke submakes.  ALWAYS use $(MAKE).

  * You really don't need the echo because make will already print a
    comment when it invokes itself in a subdirectory.

  * If you are using GNU make anyway you can use the -C option to gain a
    little efficiency:

     $(BUILDDIRS):
             @$(MAKE) -C $@ -f Makefile.sun

  * In your example you have a prerequisite of $(BUILDDIRS) but then you
    loop on $(MAKEDIRS); I assumed that was a typo in my example above.

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
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