Re: % vs. "No rule to make target"

[Paul Smith]

On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 12:02 +0800, address@hidden wrote:
> Maybe whatever prints messages prefixed by
>    make: *** No rule to make target
> is called from several different points in the code, and could give
> finer grained messages, all still on one line.
> 
> Maybe there is a difference between "no rule at all" and "yes, a few
> rules, but no best one". Like, "no wires at all found" and "yes found
> some wires, but none that could complete the circut" and "several
> paths to complete the circut, but no best path, so giving up".

There is no "several rules but no best rule".  In make, the very first
matching rule it finds that works is considered the "best rule"; only if
there is no matching rule at all do you get this message.

I suppose it would be possible to make a distinction in the output
between a situation where no rule that matched the target was found and
one where an implicit rule matched the target, but couldn't be used.
However, I don't know what helpful information that really gives you.
Plus, there would be no way you'd ever get the "no rule matched the
target" message unless you had customized your makefile to remove the
built-in rules, because there are a number of "match anything" built-in
rules, that match ALL targets.

-- 
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