make: *** No rule to make target `all'. Stop

Question

I keep getting this error:

make: *** No rule to make target `all'.  Stop. 

Even though my make file looks like this:

CC=gcc CFLAGS=-c -Wall  all: build  build: inputText.o outputText.o main.o     gcc main.o inputText.o outputText.o -o main  main.o: main.c     $(CC) $(CFLAGS) main.c -o main.o  inputText.o: inputText.c     $(CC) $(CFLAGS) inputText.c -o inputText.o  outputText.o: outputText.c     $(CC) $(CFLAGS) outputText.c -o outputText.o 

Yes there should be a tab space underneath the target and there is in my make file.

I can get it to work if I try one of the targets like main.o, inputText.o and outputText.o but can't with either build or all.

EDIT: I just randomly tried running make and telling it the file using the following command:

make -f make 

This works but why doesn't just typing make work?

Answer 1

Your makefile should ideally be named makefile, not make. Note that you can call your makefile anything you like, but as you found, you then need the -f option with make to specify the name of the makefile. Using the default name of makefile just makes life easier.