How to create a directory in make?

Question

GNU Make

The original makefile looked like this:

install:
  mkdir "/usr/local/bin/myprogram/"
  cp ./src/myprogram /usr/local/bin/myprogram/
  ...

Everything is fine, but if I edit the code and re-do make install, then it swears that the directory exists and stops.

sudo make install 
mkdir "/usr/local/bin/myprogram/"
mkdir: невозможно создать каталог «/usr/local/bin/myprogram/»: Файл существует
makefile:2: recipe for target 'install' failed
make: *** [install] Error 1

Answer 1

Put a minus before mkdir (and before cp too).
make analyzes the return code of each executed command individually, if the command ends with a return code not equal to 0 (usually a sign of an error when the program is running), then make by default terminates the build process with an error. The minus sign causes make to ignore the return code.