Re: Troubles with GNUstep Make

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 17 Mar 2009, at 20:32, Torli Birnbauer wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-03-17 at 19:59 +0000, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> > On 17 Mar 2009, at 19:45, Torli Birnbauer wrote:
> >
> > > I have recently installed GNUstep binaries with Synaptic Package
> > > Manager on my Ubuntu system, and subsequently started to study the
> > > Base Programming Manual, where I came across the following:
> > >
> > >
> > > Now create the makefile, again using your favourite text editor,  
> > and
> > > save it in the same project directory with the filename  
> > GNUmakefile.
> > >
> > > include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make
> > > TOOL_NAME = LogTest
> > > LogTest_OBJC_FILES = source.m
> > > include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/tool.make
> > >
> > > If you look at the makefile above you will notice the two lines  
> > that
> > > tell the make utility to build a tool with the filename LogTest  
> > from
> > > the Objective-C source file source.m. You could copy and modify  
> > this
> > > makefile for later projects you may have: just change the tool name
> > > and list the new source files.
> > >
> > > The trouble is that changing the line {{ TOOL_NAME = LogTest }} to
> > > something else, make does not work.
> > > It looks as if certain names like {{ LogTest, simple, ...}} were  
> > pre-
> > > compiled into GNUstep make. Is this a known undocumented problem,  
> > or
> > > will building GNUstep Make from source solve this problem?
> >
> > Neither ...  there's no evidence of any problem with gnustep-make
> > there.  What it looks like is that there is a problem with your  
> > source
> > code.  The makefile is trying to link the tool WriteStr2File and has
> > found that the source code (whatever that is in your case) does not
> > contain the required  'main()' function.
> >
> > You can do 'make messages=yes' to get more information about exactly
> > what it's doing.
>
> Richard, this is a very interesting hypothesis you've brought up. I  
> Know to you it must look credible, but it is a total hogwash to me!  
> If I change the setting of {{ TOOL_NAME }} variable from   
> {{ TOOL_NAME = WriteStr2File }} back to {{ TOOL_NAME = LogTest }} or  
> to {{ TOOL_NAME = simple }}, as can be found in the "Make Utility"  
> documentation on page http://www.gnustep.org/developers/documentation.html 
>  under the subtitle "1.2 Structure of a Makefile" the compilation  
> and linking finishes flawlessly.

All that shows is that you have got a main() in the source files for  
LogTest and no main() in the source files for WriteStr2File

Most likely that means you changed 'TOOL_NAME = LogTest' to 'TOOL_NAME  
= WriteStr2File' but forgot to change 'LogTest_OBJC_FILES = source.m'  
to 'WriteStr2File_OBJC_FILES = source.m'

In that case you are telling it to build the tool 'WriteStr2File', but  
telling it that the source files list (WriteStr2File_OBJC_FILES) is  
empty.
If there are no source files, then of course main() is not found in  
any of the source files, so you get the linker error saying that.