Makefile does not evaluate OBJECTS variable - c++

Question

I am trying to build a Makefile that will build a shared library with g++ and I find that it is not evaluating the OBJECTS variable. This is on Ubuntu 18.04 and all the files are in the same current directory. Secondly it is completely skipping the source file compilation and proceeding directly to evaluate the linking instruction. As a clarification I am using GNU Make 4.1
Here is what I get when I type make all
g++ -shared -pthread -o tree.so
g++: fatal error: no input files
compilation terminated.
Makefile:12: recipe for target 'tree.so' failed
make: *** [tree.so] Error 1
Here is my Makefile code
CC=g++
CFLAGS = -I/usr/local/include -Wall -std=c++17 -O3 -march=native -Ofast -ftree-vectorize
LIBS=-shared -pthread
SOURCES=$(wildcard *.cpp)
OBJECTS=$(wildcard *.o)
TARGET=tree.so
all:$(TARGET)
$(TARGET) : $(OBJECTS)
$(CC) $(LIBS) -o $(OBJECTS) $(TARGET)
$(OBJECTS):$(SOURCES)
$(CC) -c -g $(CFLAGS) $(SOURCES)
clean:
rm -f $(OBJECTS) $(TARGET)

Answer 1

If you only have the *.cpp files in your directories, then there is not any *.o yet, so your $(wildcard *.o) will expand to nothing.
What you want is to get the *.cpp files and compute the corresponding *.o files:
OBJECTS=$(patsubst %.cpp,%.o,$(SOURCES))
or equivalently:
OBJECTS=$(SOURCES:.cpp=.o)
Now, your compiler command is not the best one, because if you touch any source file all will be compiled. You can use instead:
$(OBJECTS): %.o: %.cpp
$(CC) -c -g $(CFLAGS) $< -o $#
So that only the touched files are actually rebuilt.
Also you have the linking command wrong. It should be:
$(TARGET) : $(OBJECTS)
$(CC) $(LIBS) -o $(TARGET) $(OBJECTS)
because the argument to the -o option is the output file, that is the target.