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I am trying to compile a program written in Fortran using make (I have a Makefile and, while in the directory containing the Makefile, I type the command $ make target, where "target" is a system-specific target specification is present in my Makefile. As I experiment with various revisions of my target specification, I often get a variety of error messages when attempting to call make. To give a few examples:

make[1]: Entering directory
/bin/sh: line 0: test: too many arguments
./dpp   angfrc.f > angfrc.tmp.f
/bin/sh: ./dpp: Permission denied
make[1]: *** [angfrc.o] Error 126
make[1]: Leaving directory
make: *** [cmu60] Error 2

and

make[1]: Entering directory
/bin/sh: line 0: test: too many arguments
./dpp -DSTRESS -DMPI -P -D'pointer=integer'-I/opt/mpich_intel/include  angfrc.f > angfrc.tmp.f
/bin/sh: ./dpp: Permission denied
make[1]: *** [angfrc.o] Error 126
make[1]: Leaving directory 
make: *** [mpich-c2] Error 2

and

make[1]: Entering directory 
/bin/sh: line 0: test: too many arguments
./dpp -DSTRESS -DMPI -P -D'pointer=integer' -I/opt/mpich_intel/include  angfrc.f > angfrc.tmp.f
/bin/sh: ./dpp: Permission denied
make[1]: *** [angfrc.o] Error 126
make[1]: Leaving directory 
make: *** [mpi-intel] Error 2

Do you know how I can find a list of what the error codes, such as "Error 126" and "Error 2," mean? I found this thread on another website, but I am not sure what the reply means. Does it mean that there is no system-independent meaning of the make error codes? Can you please help me? Thank you.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Andrew
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2 Answers2

35

The error codes aren't from make: make is reporting the return status of the command that failed. You need to look at the documentation of each command to know what each status value means. Most commands don't bother with distinctions other than 0 = success, anything else = failure.

In each of your examples, ./dpp cannot be executed. When this happens, the shell that tried to invoke it exits with status code 126 (this is standard behavior). The instance of make that was running that shell detects a failed command (the shell) and exits, showing you Error 126. That instance of make is itself a command executed by a parent instance of make, and the make utility returns 2 on error, so the parent make reports Error 2.

The failure of your build is likely to stem from test: too many arguments. This could be a syntax error in the makefile, or it could be due to relying on bash-specific features when you have a /bin/sh that isn't bash. Try running make SHELL=/bin/bash target or make SHELL=/bin/ksh target; if that doesn't work, you need to fix your makefile.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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17

To clarify, Make always returns one of three error codes, as stated on gnu.org:

  • 0: Exit status is 'Successful'
  • 2: Make Encountered Errors
  • 1: Return response to -q (question) flag, indicating that targets require updating

You can test this by running your examples above (assuming you still have them from 2011) and then running echo $? in the terminal to print the previous return code.

Make will print out other error codes it encounters (like the 126 you found), but if it runs into an error it will always return an error code of 2.

Timothy Clifford
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  • There are some edge cases to this, such as when the OOM killer nukes a process — in which case you can get 136. I suspect you can also get some other codes back in the execution of `make` itself fails, such as 126. – Caleb Apr 06 '22 at 13:57