Why does Gnumake from parent directory behave differently? - gnu-make

Question

I am stumped as to why when I do a gnumake from the parent directory it behaves incorrectly, whereas, if I cd to the subdirectory and do gnumake it works correctly.
In the parent makefile, I have a rule like this:
.PHONY: zlib-1.2.5
zlib-1.2.5:
# echo Issuing $(MAKE) in $# ...
pushd zlib-1.2.5; make; popd
I also tried it like this for last line above with the same failure:
make -C zlib-1.2.5
Which gives different result than doing the same from the toplevel
pushd zlib-1.2.5; make; popd
There is a something from the parent makefile that is making its way into the subdirectory makefile and causing it to behave incorrectly, but I don't know how to find it.
The symptom I see is that the subdirectory config generated makefile rule for zlib misses the dependencies and I get this result going straight to the ar without generating the .o(s) first:
cd ~/src; make zlib-1.2.5
CPPFLAGS_AUTO = < >
Issuing make in zlib-1.2.5 ...
pushd zlib-1.2.5; make; popd
~/src/zlib-1.2.5 ~/src
make[1]: Entering directory `/disk2/user/src/zlib-1.2.5'
ar rc libz.a adler32.o compress.o crc32.o deflate.o gzclose.o gzlib.o gzread.o gzwrite.o infback.o inffast.o inflate.o inftrees.o trees.o uncompr.o zutil.o
ar: adler32.o: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [libz.a] Error 1
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libz.so.1,--version-script,zlib.map -O3 -fPIC -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o libz.so.1.2.5 adler32.lo compress.lo crc32.lo deflate.lo gzclose.lo gzlib.lo gzread.lo gzwrite.lo infback.lo inffast.lo inflate.lo inftrees.lo trees.lo uncompr.lo zutil.lo -lc -L. libz.a
gcc: adler32.lo: No such file or directory
gcc: compress.lo: No such file or directory
gcc: crc32.lo: No such file or directory
gcc: deflate.lo: No such file or directory
[...]
make[1]: *** [libz.so.1.2.5] Error 1
make[1]: Target `all' not remade because of errors.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/disk2/user/src/zlib-1.2.5'
~/src
Versus from the zlib directory where it works correctly:
cd ~/src/zlib-1.2.5; make
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -c -o example.o example.c
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -c -o adler32.o adler32.c
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -c -o compress.o compress.c
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -c -o crc32.o crc32.c
[...]
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -c -o zutil.o zutil.c
ar rc libz.a adler32.o compress.o crc32.o deflate.o gzclose.o gzlib.o gzread.o gzwrite.o infback.o inffast.o inflate.o inftrees.o trees.o uncompr.o zutil.o
(ranlib libz.a || true) >/dev/null 2>&1
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o example example.o -L. libz.a
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -c -o minigzip.o minigzip.c
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o minigzip minigzip.o -L. libz.a
mkdir objs 2>/dev/null || test -d objs
gcc -O3 -fPIC -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -DPIC -c -o objs/adler32.o adler32.c
mv objs/adler32.o adler32.lo
mkdir objs 2>/dev/null || test -d objs
gcc -O3 -fPIC -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -DPIC -c -o objs/compress.o compress.c
mv objs/compress.o compress.lo
[...]
mkdir objs 2>/dev/null || test -d objs
gcc -O3 -fPIC -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -DPIC -c -o objs/zutil.o zutil.c
mv objs/zutil.o zutil.lo
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libz.so.1,--version-script,zlib.map -O3 -fPIC -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o libz.so.1.2.5 adler32.lo compress.lo crc32.lo deflate.lo gzclose.lo gzlib.lo gzread.lo gzwrite.lo infback.lo inffast.lo inflate.lo inftrees.lo trees.lo uncompr.lo zutil.lo -lc -L. libz.a
rm -f libz.so libz.so.1
ln -s libz.so.1.2.5 libz.so
ln -s libz.so.1.2.5 libz.so.1
rmdir objs
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o examplesh example.o -L. libz.so.1.2.5
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o minigzipsh minigzip.o -L. libz.so.1.2.5
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o example64 example64.o -L. libz.a
gcc -O3 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1 -o minigzip64 minigzip64.o -L. libz.a

Answer 1

run make -D to turn on debug

Answer 2

pushd zlib-1.2.5; make; popd
should be
make -C zlib-1.2.5
The -C flag/switch changes the directory similar to what your code does with the pushd and popd commands. The difference is in the behaviour since this make process is recursive. And actually, you might use $(MAKE) instead of make in the event that a command such as gmake is used instead of what might be BSD make (since it is a GNU makefile).