Question

My project folders look like this

Makefile
/src
  /flash
    build.xml
  /blabla
    ...

I wrote a Makefile like this

flash: src/flash/bin-debug/App.swf

src/flash/bin-debug/App.swf:
    cd src/flash
    ant

When I execute make flash, I get the following message:

cd src/flash/
ant
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed
make: *** [src/flash/bin-debug/App.swf] Error 1

How can I execute ant in src/flash

Answer 1

As explained by aix, you must write cd src/flash; ant on a single line.

As you haven’t specified any dependencies for the App.swf target, make cannot rebuild when they change. You could add them. The problem is that you don’t want to duplicate the work you are already doing with ant.

With GNU Make the solution is to use a phony target. It is a type of target that is not interpreted as a file name and whose commands will be executed every time the target is built.

This looks something like this:

.PHONY: flash

flash:
    cd src/flash; ant

Typing make flash repeatedly will invoke ant every time.