c - Makefile: Error1

Question

I have a very simple c programme:

int main()
{
  return(1);
}

and a simple Makefile:

all:
    gcc -ansi -pedantic -o tmp tmp.c
    ./tmp

However, when I type make I get the following error message:

$ make
gcc -ansi -pedantic -o tmp tmp.c
./tmp
make: *** [all] Error 1

What obvious thing am I missing?

Answer 1

Make exits with an error if any command it executes exits with an error.

Since your program is exiting with a code of 1, make sees that as an error, and then returns the same error itself.

You can tell make to ignore errors by placing a - at the beginning of the line like this:

-./tmp

You can see more about error handling in makefiles here.