Make "Giving up" silently (besides exit code)

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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Make "Giving up" silently (besides exit code)

Thread: Make "Giving up" silently (besides exit code)