Execute commands if compiling fails with Make

Question

With GNU Make and one of the compilers in gcc: Is it possible to execute commands if (and only if) the compiling fails?

Do you mean if the make command fails, or if one of the commands inside one of the targets fails? — Merlyn Morgan-Graham
– Merlyn Morgan-Graham, Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 21:54

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-30 22:31:11Z

2

If you prefix a command with -, make keeps going even if the command returns a nonzero error code. But there's no way to access the error code from the first command in the second command.

You can write arbitrarily complex shell scripts in a single make command. For example, here is how to call two recovery commands if the C compiler fails, running the second one only if the first one fails, and then stopping the build process if the C compiler failed.

$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $@ -c $< || { \
  recovery_command_1 && \
  recovery_command_2; \
  false; \
}

edited Jul 30, 2010 at 22:31

answered Jul 30, 2010 at 21:44

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

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1 Comment

Paul Over a year ago

Neat! Exactly what I was looking for.

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