Question

I am a college undergraduate trying to learn C++ programming on my Macbook. It is installed with Mac OSX 10.7.3.

I have been trying to build the “hello world” project on Eclipse Helios, but after I clicked on the build project button, it keeps telling me “cannot run program ‘make : unknow reason”.

I noticed this post but it seems to be for the Windows OS instead of MAC OS, and I don’t quite follow the instructions in it either (sorry I don’t have any familiarity with programming…). The description for PATH variable is “not available” and I don’t know if this is a problem. I’m also confused about what to put in the “Name” slot.

Edit:
Now after some trials I have “make” in my PATH. (i.e. the command line gives the information of the make after I input “make –version”) and my PATH is set to

/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/texbin

However the same problem still persists. Can anybody please help? Thank you!!

Answer 1

EDIT: Undeleted this answer as it turned out to be correct.

Yes, I’d say that $PATH was the problem.

Your system default version of $PATH should be sufficient and if not then set it correctly in your .profile or .bash_profile. You’ll need to logout and back in for these changes to take effect. Doing this will mean that you can compile from the command line without going into eclipse, which is something you’ll want to do at some point.

Now simply configure eclipse to avoid setting any build variables and all should be well. Under Window > Preferences > C/C++ > Build > Build Variables, the list should be empty: