Make error: missing separator

Question

I am getting the following error running make:

Makefile:168: *** missing separator.  Stop.

What is causing this?

Answer 1

Just for grins, and in case somebody else runs into a similar error:

I got the infamous "missing separator" error because I had invoked a rule defining a function as

($eval $(call function,args))

rather than

$(eval $(call function,args))

i.e. ($eval $(call... rather than $(eval $(call....

Answer 2

So apparently, all I needed was the "build-essential" package, then to run autoconf first, which made the Makefile.pre.in, then the ./configure then the make which works perfectly...

Answer 3

In my case error caused next. I've tried to execute commands globally i.e outside of any target.

UPD. To run command globally one must be properly formed. For example command

ln -sf ../../user/curl/$SRC_NAME ./$SRC_NAME

would become:

$(shell ln -sf ../../user/curl/$(SRC_NAME) ./$(SRC_NAME))

Answer 4

Following Makefile code worked:

obj-m = hello.o

all:
    $(MAKE) -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) modules 

clean:
    $(MAKE) -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) clean

Answer 5

In my case, the same error was caused because colon: was missing at end as in staging.deploy:. So note that it can be easy syntax mistake.

Answer 6

For me, the problem was that I had some end-of-line # ... comments embedded within a define ... endef multi-line variable definition. Removing the comments made the problem go away.