calling makefiles - handling exceptions - exception

Question

I realized that as I run makefiles from my main makefile, if they child makefiles fail, the parent continues and does not return with an error exit code.
I've tried to add the exception handling...but it does not work. Any ideas?
MAKE_FILES := $(wildcard test_*.mak)
compile_tests:
#echo "Compiling tests.$(MAKE_FILES)."
#for m in $(MAKE_FILES); do\
$(MAKE) -f "$$m"; || $(error Failed to compile $$m)\
done

Answer 1

You cannot use make functions like $(error ...) in your recipe, because all make variables and functions are expanded first, before the shell is invoked. So the error function will happen immediately when make tries to run that recipe, before it even starts.
You have to use shell constructs to fail, not make constructs; something like:
compile_tests:
#echo "Compiling tests.$(MAKE_FILES)."
#for m in $(MAKE_FILES); do \
$(MAKE) -f "$$m" && continue; \
echo Failed to compile $$m; \
exit 1
done
However, even this is not really great, because if you use -k it will still stop immediately. Better is to take advantage of what make does well, which is run lots of things:
compile_tests: $(addprefix tests.$(MAKE_FILES))
$(addprefix tests.$(MAKE_FILES)): tests.%:
$(MAKE) -f "$*"
One note, if you enable -j these will all run in parallel. Not sure if that's OK with you or not.