Question

I’m a starter at this(make), and having some problems trying to grep for a text in a file (as part of the make process on Windows). The larger problem I’m trying to solve is to check whether all binary executables in a given directory have their respective dependencies satisfied. I use depends.exe (Dependency Walker) for the later part, whose output file I’m trying to grep, and possibly abort the build process if the dependency validation fails.

binary-dependency-validate:
for BINARYEXEC in $(shell $(PATH_TO_FIND_EXE) $(PRE_DEFINED_DIR) -name "*.exe"); do \
   $(PATH_TO_DEPENDS_EXE) /c /pb /ot $(PRE_DEFINED_DIR)/$$BINARYEXEC-depends.txt $(PRE_DEFINED_DIR)/$$BINARYEXEC ; \
   ifeq ($(shell $(PATH_TO_GREP_EXE) "Error: At least one required implicit or forwarded dependency was not found." $(PRE_DEFINED_DIR)/$$BINARYEXEC-depends.txt),); \
      @echo "Dependency ok" ; \
   endif ; \
done

I’m encountering the following error :

line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `,'

Any suggestions would greatly help. I looked at this post and tried aligning ifeq without indentation as well (that didn’t help either.)

Answer 1

The problem is that you are mixing Make language with shell language.

A makefile contains rules, and a rule contains commands which are executed by a shell:

target:
    first command
    second command

The commands are in shell language, and each command must be preceded by a TAB.

There are conditionals in Make:

ifeq (foo, bar)
  VAR = something      
endif

(The indentation is just for the eye.)

There are also conditionals in the various scripting languages:

if [ -f log ]
  then
    echo "log exists."
fi

A Make conditional can enclose a command within a rule:

target:
ifeq (foo, bar)
    first command
endif
    second command

Make will evaluate this conditional before running the rule, and there must be no TAB before ifeq or endif, because Make must not interpret them as commands to be passed to the shell.

A command (in a rule) can contain a shell conditional:

target:
    if [ -f log ]; \
  then echo "log exists." ; \
  fi

The indentation before if is a TAB. The other whitespace is for the eye.

Your makefile has a Make conditional in the middle of a shell command; Make can’t evaluate the conditional before the command executes, and the shell can’t understand Make syntax. You should use a shell conditional.