Make "Giving up" silently (besides exit code)

[John Orr]

Hi,

I wonder if anyone can help me - I'm using make 3.81 on Suse Linux 9.2.
I hit a problem today where I had an error in a make file, such that a target 
was reliant upon a prerequiste for which there was no rule.  It was my fault.

The problem, however, was that make gave no error message at all - it just 
exited with status 2.

When I ran it with the -d option, the end of the output was
   Considering target file `common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h'.
     File `common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h' does not exist.
      Considering target file `common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h.built'.
       File `common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h.built' does not exist.
        Considering target file `common/protocol/mipv6/dl26/mipv6.c.built'.
         File `common/protocol/mipv6/dl26/mipv6.c.built' does not exist.
          Considering target file `common/utils/dl26/g_ntformat'.
           Looking for an implicit rule for `common/utils/dl26/g_ntformat'.
           No implicit rule found for `common/utils/dl26/g_ntformat'.
           Finished prerequisites of target file `common/utils/dl26/g_ntformat'.
          No need to remake target `common/utils/dl26/g_ntformat'.
          Pruning file `common/protocol/dl26/locid.h.exists'.
          Pruning file `common/protocol/mipv6/mipv6.s'.
         Finished prerequisites of target file 
`common/protocol/mipv6/dl26/mipv6.c.built'.
        Giving up on target file `common/protocol/mipv6/dl26/mipv6.c.built'.
       Finished prerequisites of target file 
`common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h.built'.
      Giving up on target file `common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h.built'.
     Finished prerequisites of target file 
`common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h'.
    Giving up on target file `common/protocol/include/dl26/mipv6.h'.
   Finished prerequisites of target file 
`common/protocol/mipv6/dl26/mipv6dec.o'.
  Giving up on target file `common/protocol/mipv6/dl26/mipv6dec.o'.
 Finished prerequisites of target file `common/protocol/mipv6'.
Giving up on target file `common/protocol/mipv6'.

My problem is - I know to use the -d flag in this situation to see what's 
really going on - but most people I work with don't.  They get no info at all.  
How can I detect this problem and give a meaningful error message?  I could 
modify make's remake.c source file perhaps - but is there a better way?

The output without -d is nothing (beside explicit $(info ) statements which 
I've deleted to avoid confusing anyone:
quokka:/<5>intel/src> make --warn-undefined-variables --check-symlink-times 
--no-builtin-variables --makefile=local.mk r_BUILDDIR=dl26 "DONT_USE_P4=1" 
"DONT_DO_FINDMODULES=1" ./COMPONENT_CONTENTS=common 
common/COMPONENT_CONTENTS=common/protocol 
common/protocol/COMPONENT_CONTENTS=common/protocol/mipv6 DONT_DO_FINDMODULES=1 
common/protocol/mipv6
quokka:/<5>intel/src> echo $?
2
quokka:/<5>intel/src>                

I can happily provide a full -dpq dump if it helps.

Looking at remake.c, I find
      if (depth == 0 && keep_going_flag
          && !just_print_flag && !question_flag)
        error (NILF,
               _("Target `%s' not remade because of errors."), file->name);

Presumably this if statement failed to print because I didn't have the 
keep_going_flag (-k?) set?

Thanks for any tips you can give,
John




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