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22.16 Make says "missing separator"

Q: When I invoke Make, it refuses to do anything and prints a cryptic message: "makefile:10: *** missing separator. Stop." Now what kind of excuse is that?

A: Unlike most other DOS Make programs which accept any whitespace character at the beginning of a command in a rule, GNU Make insists that every such line begins with a TAB. (Most other Unix Make programs also require TABs, and the Posix standard requires it as well.) Make sure that the line whose number is printed in the error message (in this case, line 10) begins with a TAB.

There are editors that replace TABs with spaces, so even a Makefile that used to work can become unworkable if you edit them with such an editor.

Another, more rare, cause of the above error message is if you use static pattern rules (with the % character) incorrectly. Read the documentation that comes with Make carefully and try to find the error.


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