'make' exit codes

jhwilliams · 08-20-2007, 09:43 AM

When you compile something with make, and you receive output like:

Code:

make[3]: ...stuff...

3 is the error code, correct?

Is it normal to receive some make warnings/errors during a build, or should you really just receive clean standard out if you expect something to work properly?

weibullguy · 08-20-2007, 11:22 AM

It's the error code of the shell command that make was trying to execute. For example, if the Makefile has a command

Code:

mkdir /fu/bar/lib

and directory /fu/bar/lib already exists, then mkdir will return an exit status of 1. make will output make[1] and possibly a message.

make itself only has three exit status codes:

0 = make was successful.
1 = if you use the `-q' flag and make determines that some target is not already up to date.
2 = make encounters any errors. It will print messages describing the particular errors.