Automatic exit from bash shell script on error

Question

I've been writing some shell script and I would find it useful if there was the ability to halt the execution of said shell script if any of the commands failed. See below for an example:

#!/bin/bash  

cd some_dir  

./configure --some-flags  

make  

make install

So in this case if the script can't change to the indicated directory then it would certainly not want to do a ./configure afterwards if it fails.

Now I'm well aware that I could have an if check for each command (which I think is a hopeless solution), but is there a global setting to make the script exit if one of the commands fails?

Answer 1

An alternative to the accepted answer that fits in the first line:

#!/bin/bash -e

cd some_dir  

./configure --some-flags  

make  

make install