> it fails with a message saying that target cannot > be built. That's close to what it says but the OP's right that, strictly speaking, the message make produces isn't actually true. If it said "no rule whose prerequisites can be built to make target" then it would be true but verbose. I can see that the intention behind the error message is to be more helpful but some correctness has been lost. "Target %s cannot be built" sounds like an excellent suggestion to me - it's short and clear and accurate.
> there are usually many possible pattern rules > which it MIGHT match, if it could build the > prerequisites An example might help persuade - % is often make-able from %.c - so any list of potentially missing prerequisites would have to include %.c. I'm tempted to suggest that I might sometimes find the list of missing prerequisites useful when debugging but perhaps it would be so explosively large that it wouldn't be useful even as an option. I do OK with make -p anyway. ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Dan Jacobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Thu Dec 28 00:29:51 2006 Subject: Re: getting warmer error messages I can only assume you're trying to prove a point by making this bug report virtually unintelligible, with no concrete suggestions for improvement. Well played. Unfortunately for your point, there's a good reason for make's behavior. Pattern rules only match if make can successfully create all the prerequisites in the rule. If one or more cannot be created, then the pattern rule does not match. If no pattern rule matches for a given target (and no explicit rules exist for it), then make can't figure out how to build that target and so it fails with a message saying that target cannot be built. What else should it do? For any given target there are usually many possible pattern rules which it MIGHT match, if it could build the prerequisites. The default pattern rules, by themselves, provide a number of ways of building any file, and a multitude of ways to build some types of file. I don't believe it would be useful for make to print a list of potential targets that, if they could be built, would allow the target you asked for to be built. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Find some GNU make tips at: http://www.gnu.org http://make.paulandlesley.org "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make
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