What these make messages mean while compiling sane-backends?

Question

I tried to compile the sane-backends from source but getting the following messages after running make, to configure, I ran ./configure --enable-avahi BACKENDS='canon genesys test'

make[1]: Leaving directory /home/.../sane-backends/po'
Making all in testsuite
make[1]: Entering directory/home/.../sane-backends/testsuite' Making all in sanei make[2]: Entering directory /home/.../sane-backends/testsuite/sanei'
run 'make check' to run tests
make[2]: Leaving directory/home/.../sane-backends/testsuite/sanei' Making all in tools make[2]: Entering directory /home/.../sane-backends/testsuite/tools'
Use 'make check' to run the tests.
run 'make check' to run tests
make[2]: Leaving directory/home/..../sane-backends/testsuite/tools' make[2]: Entering directory /home/.../sane-backends/testsuite'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for all-am'. make[2]: Leaving directory /home/..../sane-backends/testsuite'
Use 'make test' to run the tests.
make[1]: Leaving directory/home/.../sane-backends/testsuite' make[1]: Entering directory /home/.../sane-backends'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for all-am'. make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/.../sane-backends'

What's wrong with for all-am?

Answer 1

You seem to be mistaken as to what is considered an error condition of the make program. "Nothing to be done" is not an error; it means that there is nothing left to do because the job was already done at a previous invocation of make. You can also look at the exit status of the make invocation if you run echo $? just afterwards. "0" means "no error encountered, everything was done as you asked".

Occasionally "Nothing to be done" is caused by a faulty Makefile (a. k. a. "job description") that doesn't reflect the intended action. You should report this as a bug to the author(s)/maintainer(s) of the Makefile.