make: Nothing to be done for `all'

Question

I am going through an eg pgm to create a make file.

http://mrbook.org/tutorials/make/

My folder eg_make_creation contains the following files,

desktop:~/eg_make_creation$ ls
factorial.c  functions.h  hello  hello.c  main.c  Makefile

Makefile

# I am a comment, and I want to say that the variable CC will be
# the compiler to use.
CC=gcc
# Hwy!, I am comment no.2. I want to say that CFLAGS will be the
#options I'll pass to the compiler
CFLAGS=-c -Wall

all:hello

hello:main.o factorial.o hello.o
  $(CC) main.o factorial.o hello.o -o hello

main.o:main.c
  $(CC) $(CFLAGS) main.c

factorial.o:factorial.c
  $(CC) $(CFLAGS) factorial.c

hello.o:hello.c
  $(CC) $(CFLAGS) hello.c

clean:
  rm -rf *o hello

error:

desktop:~/eg_make_creation$ make all
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.

Please help me understand to compile this program.

Answer 1

I think the answers have missed a fun case; also the "nothing to be done" message isn't even listed in the GNU Make manual, so maybe it deserves some elaboration. Here's a shell session that shows how GNU Make may say "nothing to be done" even though the target doesn't exist:

ron@ron-OptiPlex-9020:/tmp$ mkdir ./newdir
ron@ron-OptiPlex-9020:/tmp$ cd newdir
ron@ron-OptiPlex-9020:/tmp/newdir$ touch foo.o
ron@ron-OptiPlex-9020:/tmp/newdir$ echo -e "prog:foo.o\nfoo:foo.o\n" >Makefile
ron@ron-OptiPlex-9020:/tmp/newdir$ make prog
make: Nothing to be done for 'prog'.
ron@ron-OptiPlex-9020:/tmp/newdir$ 

prog depends on foo.o. foo.o exists, but prog doesn't. And you get the nothing to be done error! But now watch what happens:

ron@ron-OptiPlex-9020:/tmp/newdir$ make foo
cc   foo.o   -o foo
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/13/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/Scrt1.o: in function `_start':
(.text+0x1b): undefined reference to `main'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [<builtin>: foo] Error 1

Remember, prog depends on foo.o, foo.o exists, prog doesn't, and you get "Nothing to be done."

But now, foo depends on foo.o, foo.o exists, foo doesn't, and you DON'T get the "Nothing to be done" message, it really tries to build foo!

The core issue here is that make-style utilities have implicit rules that heavily depend on file extensions. But *nix convention gives no unique extension to executables (unlike .exe in Windows/DOS). So how could GNU Make ever have a built-in rule that builds executables for you?

It can't, not really. The best it can do is a hack with an implicit rule like:

%: %.o
#  recipe to execute (built-in):
        $(LINK.o) $^ $(LOADLIBES) $(LDLIBS) -o $@

So, if your executable relies on an object file of the same prefix, GNU Make will NOT give you the "Nothing to be done" message. Because it was able to find an implicit rule that is willing to guess you're trying to build an executable.

A more appropriate error message (one that's even documented!) would be "No rule to make target 'prog'". But this is just part of a nest of unpleasant UX experiences in GNU Make having to do with the fact that executables cannot be reliably identified from their name.

Answer 2

In your case, I strongly feel the only and simple problem you had is that you only preprocessed your app. You did so by having the flag -c under CFLAGS.

Answer 3

I was trying to install libuv on Ubuntu and i also got the error make: Nothing to be done for 'all'. As i see it, using make gives two ways to solve the problem, one for check and one for install. But i found a workaround still use the sudo make check command - it helps to read all the error messages before deciding on further actions. Basically, i've introduced a regression that makes the update workaround inefficient. This error comes from make however, the workaround from install fixes this, just try to run sudo make install and see what happens. The make command will be a local optimization at the expense of the overall result of check/install - c'est ma façon de parler. I believe i have narrowed down the problem considerably: in the first case after check i have "FAIL: test/run-tests" and in the second after install i get "specify the full pathname of the library, or use the '-LLIBDIR'" This argument to check/install can be a list object to store information about completed installations. So install reports partial success when nothing actually happened.

Try running the commands from root:

cd your_program
sh autogen.sh
./configure
make
make check
make install

And then he writes that the installation was successful:

Libraries have been installed in: 
/usr/local/lib

Answer 4

Using the comment from Paul R, I found that

make clean

followed by

make

or

make all

fixed my problem.

Answer 5

That is not an error; the make command in unix works based on the timestamps. I.e let's say if you have made certain changes to factorial.cpp and compile using make then make shows the information that only the cc -o factorial.cpp command is executed. Next time if you execute the same command i.e make without making any changes to any file with .cpp extension the compiler says that the output file is up to date. The compiler gives this information until we make certain changes to any file.cpp.

The advantage of the makefile is that it reduces the recompiling time by compiling the only files that are modified and by using the object (.o) files of the unmodified files directly.

Answer 6

I arrived at this peculiar, hard-to-debug error through a different route. My trouble ended up being that I was using a pattern rule in a build step when the target and the dependency were located in distinct directories. Something like this:

foo/apple.o: bar/apple.c $(FOODEPS)

%.o: %.c
    $(CC) $< -o $@

I had several dependencies set up this way, and was trying to use one pattern recipe for them all. Clearly, a single substitution for "%" isn't going to work here. I made explicit rules for each dependency, and I found myself back among the puppies and unicorns!

foo/apple.o: bar/apple.c $(FOODEPS)
    $(CC) $< -o $@

Hope this helps someone!

Answer 7

Sometimes "Nothing to be done for all" error can be caused by spaces before command in makefile rule instead of tab. Please ensure that you use tabs instead of spaces inside of your rules.

all:
<\t>$(CC) $(CFLAGS) ...

instead of

all:
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) ...

Please see the GNU make manual for the rule syntax description: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Rule-Syntax

Answer 8

I think you missed a tab in 9th line. The line following all:hello must be a blank tab. Make sure that you have a blank tab in 9th line. It will make the interpreter understand that you want to use default recipe for makefile.

Answer 9

Remove the hello file from your folder and try again.

The all target depends on the hello target. The hello target first tries to find the corresponding file in the filesystem. If it finds it and it is up to date with the dependent files—there is nothing to do.

Answer 10

Make is behaving correctly. hello already exists and is not older than the .c files, and therefore there is no more work to be done. There are four scenarios in which make will need to (re)build:

• If you modify one of your .c files, then it will be newer than hello, and then it will have to rebuild when you run make.
• If you delete hello, then it will obviously have to rebuild it
• You can force make to rebuild everything with the -B option. make -B all
• make clean all will delete hello and require a rebuild. (I suggest you look at @Mat's comment about rm -f *.o hello

Answer 11

When you just give make, it makes the first rule in your makefile, i.e "all". You have specified that "all" depends on "hello", which depends on main.o, factorial.o and hello.o. So 'make' tries to see if those files are present.

If they are present, 'make' sees if their dependencies, e.g. main.o has a dependency main.c, have changed. If they have changed, make rebuilds them, else skips the rule. Similarly it recursively goes on building the files that have changed and finally runs the top most command, "all" in your case to give you a executable, 'hello' in your case.

If they are not present, make blindly builds everything under the rule.

Coming to your problem, it isn't an error but 'make' is saying that every dependency in your makefile is up to date and it doesn't need to make anything!