gcc makefile error No rule to make target

Question

I m trying to use GCC  linux  with a makefile to compile my project   I get the following error which is can t seem to decipher in this context      No rule to make target  vertex cpp   needed by  vertex o    Stop     This is the makefile       a out  vertex o edge o elist o main o vlist o enode o vnode o     g   vertex o edge o elist o main o vlist o enode o vnode o  main o  main cpp main h     g   -c main cpp  vertex o  vertex cpp vertex h     g   -c vertex cpp  edge o  edge cpp edge h     g   -c num cpp  vlist o  vlist cpp vlist h     g   -c vlist cpp  elist o  elist cpp elist h     g   -c elist cpp  vnode o  vnode cpp vnode h     g   -c vnode cpp  enode o  enode cpp enode h     g   -c node cpp

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In my case  it was due to me calling the Makefile  MAKEFILE  all caps

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This error occurred for me inside Travis when I forgot to add new files to my git repository  Silly mistake  but I can see it being quite common

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If you are trying to build John the Ripper  bleeding-jumbo  and get an error like  make      No rule to make target  linux-x86-64    Try running this command instead    configure  amp  amp  make

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In my case I had bone-headedly used commas as separators  To use your example I did this   a out  vertex o  edge o  elist o  main o  vlist o  enode o  vnode o     g   vertex o edge o elist o main o vlist o enode o vnode o   Changing it to the equivalent of  a out  vertex o edge o elist o main o vlist o enode o vnode o     g   vertex o edge o elist o main o vlist o enode o vnode o   fixed it

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That s usually because you don t have a file called vertex cpp available to make  Check that    that file exists  you re in the right directory when you make    Other than that  I ve not much else to suggest  Perhaps you could give us a directory listing of that directory

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Is that it exactly  Remember that Makefile syntax is whitespace aware and requires tabs to indent commands under actions

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In my case it was due to a multi-line rule error in the Makefile  I had something like   OBJS-  CONFIG OBJ1                file1 o file2 o                                     file3 o file4 o   OBJS-  CONFIG OBJ2                file5 o  OBJS-  CONFIG OBJ3                file6 o       The backslash at the end of file list in CONFIG OBJ1 s rule caused this error  It should be like   OBJS-  CONFIG OBJ1                file1 o file2 o                                     file3 o file4 o OBJS-  CONFIG OBJ2                file5 o

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This message can mean many things clearly  In my case it was compiling using multiple threads  One thread needed a dependency that another thread hadn t finished making  causing an error  Not all builds are threadsafe  so consider a slow build with one thread if your build passes other tests such as the ones listed above

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In my case  the error message referred to an old filename  which did no longer exist because it was renamed  It turned out that the outdated information did not come from the Makefile  but from files in  deps directories   I ran into this error after copying files from one machine to another  In that process  I assume the timestamps got in an inconsistent state  which confused  make  when running multiple jobs in parallel  similar to this bug report    Sequential builds with make -j 1 were not affected  but it took me a while to realize because I was using an alias  make -j 8    To clean up the state  I removed all  deps files and regenerated the Makefile  These are the commands that I used   find   grep   deps    xargs rm find   grep   deps    xargs rmdir autoreconf --install    optional  but my project is using autotools     configure   After that  building worked again

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Another example of a weird problem and its solution   This   target link libraries        PROJECT NAME        Poco LIBRARIES        Poco Foundation LIBRARY        Poco Net LIBRARY        Poco Util LIBRARY          gives  make 3       No rule to make target   usr lib libPocoFoundationd so   needed by     hello poco bin mac HelloPoco    Stop   But if I remove Poco LIBRARIES it works   target link libraries        PROJECT NAME        Poco Foundation LIBRARY        Poco Net LIBRARY        Poco Util LIBRARY          I m using clang8 on Mac and clang 3 9 on Linux The problem only occurs on Linux but works on Mac   I forgot to mention  Poco LIBRARIES was wrong - it was not set by cmake find package

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The problem I found was even sillier than what other folks have mentioned    Our makefiles get passed lists of things to build  Someone added TheOtherLibrary to one of the lists  as shown below   LIBRARYDIRS   src Library LIBRARYDIRS   src TheOtherLibrary   They should have done this   LIBRARYDIRS   src Library LIBRARYDIRS    src TheOtherLibrary   Had they done it the second way  they would not have wiped out the Library build  The plus in    is very important

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The more common reason for this message to be printed is because you forgot to include the directory in which the source file resides  As a result  gcc  thinks  this file does not exist   You can add the directory using the -I argument to gcc

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In my case  the source and or old object file s  were locked  read-only  by a semi-crashed IDE or from a backup cloud service that stopped working properly  Restarting all programs and services that were associated with the folder structure solved the problem

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In my case the path is not set in VPATH  after added the error gone

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One of frequent mistakes might be typo in another file name   You example is quite straightforward but what may sometimes confuse are  messages of make itself  Lets consider an example   My folder contents is     ls -1 another file index md makefile   Whereas my makefile looks like  all  index html    html    md wrong path to another file      echo      lt    Although I do have index md where it should be and there is no mistake in the name of it  the message from make will be  make      No rule to make target  index html   needed by  all    Stop    To be honest the message is confusing  It just says  that there is no rule  In fact  it means that the rule is wrong  but due to wildcard  pattern  rules make cannot determine what exactly caused the issue   Lets alter makefile a little  which is to say replace patterns with explicit rules   index html  index md wrong path to another file   And now the message we get will be   make      No rule to make target  wrong path to another file   needed by  index html    Stop    Miracle  The following might be concluded    Messages of make depends on rules and does not always point to the root of problems There might be other problems in your makefile different from specified by this message   Now we ve come up with the idea of checking other dependencies in a rule as well   all  index html    html    md another file      echo      lt    Only this will provide us with the desired result     make index html index md

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There are multiple reasons for this error   One of the reason where i encountered this error is while building for linux and windows   I have a filename with caps BaseClass h SubClass h Unix maintains has case-sensitive filenaming convention and windows is case-insensitive   C   why people don  39 t use uppercase in name of header files   Try compiling clean build using gmake clean if you are using gmake  Some text editors has default settings to ignore case-sensitive filenames  This could also lead to the same error   how to add a c   file in Qt Creator whose name starts with capital letters   It automatically makes it small letter

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In my experience  this error is frequently caused by a spelling error   I got this error today      make 1       No rule to make target maintenaceDialog cpp   needed bymaintenaceDialog o    Stop    In my case the error was simply a spelling error   The word MAINTENANCE was missing it s third N     Also check the spelling on your filenames

[gcc] gcc makefile error: "No rule to make target ..."

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