Home/ Questions/Q 8105707
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-06T00:14:05+00:00

I’d like to use $(error …) to abort my make process if certain preconditions

  • 0

I’d like to use $(error ...) to abort my make process if certain preconditions aren’t met. The fails_to_work target should abort when failing test -d /foobar.

BAD.mk

all: this_works fails_to_work

this_works:
        @echo echo works...
        @test -d ~ || echo ~ is not a directory
        @test -d /foobar || echo /foobar is not a directory

fails_to_work:
        @echo error does not work...
        @test -d ~ || $(error ~ is not a directory)
        @test -d /foobar || $(error /foobar is not a directory)

$ make -f BAD.mk

echo works...
/foobar is not a directory
BAD.mk:9: *** ~ is not a directory.  Stop.

As you can see, not even “error does not work…” is echoed to the screen. The recipe for fails_to_work fails before it gets started. How do I solve this? One of my use cases is@test -d $(MY_ENV_VAR), but I don’t think that differs from the hard-coded paths given in the example.

UPDATE (version information)

$ make –version

GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You’re trying to get the shell stuff in a recipe to conditionally invoke makefile stuff, which doesn’t work, as you’ve found.

    I can think of two options:

    1. Simply remove the $(error) stuff. If test fails, then it will return a non-zero exit status, and the Make process will terminate at that point.

    2. Take the test out of the rule, and use a Make conditional (which in turn invokes shell functionality), e.g.:

      ifeq ($(shell test -d /foobar; echo $$?),1)
$(error Not a directory)
endif
    • 0