I believe I know what I have done to myself here.. and recreated the problem
I followed the tutorials and setting up an application to the letter, and was having some other problem when I decided to copy the entire project I had already made doing the tedious setup things necessary. Without realizing that copying the entire project by simply copy-pasting the directory does not carry the tedious setup things necessary. And so, probably without paying attention to the "Target is up to date." build message, assuming it compiled I changed the files, it did not compile as expected, and then changed them back to their original state, and it still did not compile because they were no longer up to date.
I am going to remember this... for a long time.