g++ doesn't output any errors - c++

Question

Whenever I try to compile a c++ code with g++ on terminal, I can't seem to get g++ to output any error messages even though I am certain that there are errors that should be caught during compile time (such as syntax, reference types...).
I tried several ways such as this make file:
all:
g++ -W -Wall -Werror main.cpp
All it does is output:
make: *** [all] Error 1
which isn't that useful, obviously...
Typing things like this:
g++ -W -Wall -Werror main.cpp
directly to terminal (without the make file) doesn't output any messages at all.
However this successfully outputs all of the errors while compiling:
cc main.cpp
My question is: how do I make g++ to output error messages so I can know where to correct my code?

Answer 1

Just guessing - is it possible your terminal doesn't print stderr? Say, for example, it moves it to a log file or something?
Try running
g++ [whatever your arguments are] |& cat
(this is if you use tcsh)
or
g++ [whatever] 2>&1 | cat
if you use bash.

Answer 2

Try something simple like this:
g++ -c main.cpp

Answer 3

Make reports an error when one of it's tasks returns non-0 status. If g++ silently returns non-0 - well, i suppose it's broken somehow. Check $? after you've run g++. Also, try g++ --version - will it report anything at all? Also you could run it under debugger, just to be sure.

Answer 4

Try adding a line like
#warning hello from here
(or perhaps #error instead of #warning) into main.cc near the beginning (perhaps as the first line).
If
gcc -Wall -v main.cc
don't give any output (notably no warnings or errors) that means that your gcc is broken. Perhaps type /usr/bin/gcc instead of just gcc
BTW, Apple don't like GCC (because they dont like its GPLv3+ license). Maybe it is worth your time to build [using e.g. ..../configure --program-suffix=-local] and install a newer GCC (perhaps from the released source tar ball of the compiler). Current version is 4.8.1!