Odd error message from gmake

[mercutio]

Hey Guys,

I'm using gmake (v3.81) to build some c executables. As the first step in the process I run the files through a preprocessor (for embedded SQL). The preprocessor completes successfully, but the gmake reports an error and discontinues buiding the remaining dependencies...

make *** [myfile.c] Error 4

which (according to /usr/include/asm-generic/errno-base.h) means "interrupted System Call". My preprocessor doesn't raise any signals, so I'm not sure what's causing this error...

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

Mercutio.

[drl]

Hi.

I think you may be misinterpreting the error message. The GNU make manual explains the general error message:

Appendix B Errors Generated by Make

Here is a list of the more common errors you might see generated by make, and some information about what they mean and how to fix them.

Sometimes make errors are not fatal, especially in the presence of a - prefix on a recipe line, or the -k command line option. Errors that are fatal are prefixed with the string ***.

Error messages are all either prefixed with the name of the program (usually ‘make’), or, if the error is found in a makefile, the name of the file and linenumber containing the problem.

In the table below, these common prefixes are left off.

‘[foo] Error NN’
‘[foo] signal description’
These errors are not really make errors at all. They mean that a program that make invoked as part of a recipe returned a non-0 error code (‘Error NN’), which make interprets as failure, or it exited in some other abnormal fashion (with a signal of some type). See Errors in Recipes.

-- excerpt from GNU make manual, GNU `make' , single-page HTML, q.v.

I would say this means that your pre-processor returned the non-zero exit status of 4. If you run it outside of make (i.e. on the command line by itself), you can check the exit status with echo:

prompt> command-which-runs-your-pre-processor
prompt> echo $?

If it is returning the exit status of 4, then you need to investigate why that is happening in the pre-processor, and fix it.

For different forms of the manual, see the entry page at GNU Make Manual - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Good luck ... cheers, drl

[mercutio]

Thanks drl! You were absolutely right. I was mis-interpreting the error code. Much appreciated your swift and detaild explanation.