problem with make

[lazu]

Hi,
I downloaded and compiled ath9k. Everything goes smoothly. But when I modified the one source file and tried to do make again, I got:
make: nothing to be done for 'all'

I have to do:

make clean
make

to get it rebuild. And it takes a lot of time to rebuild everything. Why?

And, I tried to write a simple driver (kind of Hello world)
and each time I do a make with out changing source, I get:

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.28-18-generic/build M=/home/bear/workspace/test modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic'
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST 1 modules
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic'

I think it should be something like:
make: nothing to be done for....

So where does that message come from?

Any help will be appreciated.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome to the Forums.
You shouldn't need to download anything, it's all built into the kernel now and has been for awhile now. If you need ath9k, and you are certain that it isn't available on your system, then you more than likely need to download the kernel source for you particular system and recompile the kernel.
What Distro are you using? Ubuntu?

[jmadero]

seems unlikely you'd even need to do that....

[lazu]

Thanks for answers
Yes, I'm using Ubuntu 9.10.

I just want to modify something in the source of the driver and rebuild it for my course project
However, each time I modify just one file but have to rebuild the whole bunch of files

Please give me some hint.

[rcgreen]

Is your system clock working properly? When you edit a file, does
the system update its time stamp correctly? Try testing make
on a small test file.

rcgreen@blue:~/prog$ make hello
make: `hello' is up to date.
rcgreen@blue:~/prog$ touch hello.c
rcgreen@blue:~/prog$ make hello
cc     hello.c   -o hello
rcgreen@blue:~/prog$ ./hello
hello world
rcgreen@blue:~/prog$

[lazu]

Yes, I use make with my other programs. It works fine. Is there anyone with experience in rebuilding drivers?

[lazu]

I got solution from compat-wireless mail list.
Just add "modules" to the end of PHONY tag of the top level Makefile.

Hope this helps somebody else.