Thanks for the suggestion, I did fix this error but it did not resolve the issue.

I decided to move the assignment of archdir to after the definitions of ${BDIR} and ${TESTDIR}.

Now the revised code looks like this,

Code:

# create name for the build directory
BDIR := bld_$(OS)_$(KERN).$(ARCH)_$(CNAME)_$(FNAME)_$(ver)
# mkdir if the directories do not exist
${BDIR}:
    @mkdir -p ${BDIR}

# create name for test directory
TESTDIR = ./test/$(OS)_$(KERN).$(ARCH)_$(CNAME)_$(FNAME)_$(ver)
# mkdir if the directory does not exist
${TESTDIR}:
    @mkdir -p ${TESTDIR}

# archdir is executed as part of all and will create the necessary
# version specific directories if they do not exist
archdir: ${BDIR} ${TESTDIR}

This now works and the test directory is created.

Of course, it seems logical that these instructions should need to be defined in the order above in that a variable is declared and assigned before the value is used. Make has never seemed to function like this. For instance, I have OBJSC = $(OBJCM) $(OBJSCLS) $(OBJSBGR) where OBJSC is a list of objects used in a build rule. The items in the lists, $(OBJCM), $(OBJSCLS), etc, are all assigned much later in the makefile after the assignment above. This has no effect and the applications builds correctly. The build rules for the linker always seem to come before the compile rules, which is also counterintuitive.

Perhaps all of my makefiles are set up in the wrong order even though the seem to work in the main?

LMHmedchem