"commence before first target. Stop." error

Question

In *.mak file I receive commands "commence before first target. Stop." I didn't change it before.

How to solve this problem?

What's a *.mak-file? Not even http://www.wotsit.org/list.asp?al=M mentions it. What are you trying to do? What exactly is this about? If this is about make, then which incarnation of it are you using? There are plenty of makes. — Sebastian Mach, May 26 '10 at 12:02
The question does not appear to have anything to do with c or c++, so I edited the tags. I *could* do with and indication of just what build system you are using, however. Try `make --version` or check with the make manpage. — dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten, May 26 '10 at 12:39
Possible duplicate of [{Makefile Error} "commands commence before first target. Stop."](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21238223/makefile-error-commands-commence-before-first-target-stop) — tripleee, Dec 18 '15 at 17:38

score 68 · Answer 1 · answered May 26 '10 at 12:06

68

make (or NMAKE, or whatever flavour of make you are using) can be quite picky about the format of makefiles - check that you didn't actually edit the file in any way, e.g. changed line endings, spaces <-> tabs, etc.

answered May 26 '10 at 12:06

Paul R

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I got a build error due to a tab space after my line..this helped – nikoo28 Jun 11 '14 at 11:43
4

a line before the error line, I had a tab space also – meakgoz Aug 12 '14 at 15:24
1

In my case I had an equal sign (=) in the file name of the source code. Once I replaced it by a dash (-) the makefile worked just fine. – Henke Nov 17 '20 at 07:17

score 52 · Answer 2 · answered May 27 '13 at 22:57

52

This means that there is a line which starts with a space, tab, or some other whitespace without having a target in front of it.

answered May 27 '13 at 22:57

chacham15

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score 20 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 11 '15 at 08:30

20

if you have added a new line, Make sure you have added next line syntax in previous line. typically if "\" is missing in your previous line of changes, you will get this error.

answered Jun 11 '15 at 08:30

Raghu

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In particular, you can't even have a line ending with whitespace after the backslash! – NoseKnowsAll May 02 '23 at 19:47

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 03 '22 at 18:32

8

This could be echoing outside the target, for instance

# Variable 
BAR = 
ifeq ($(FOO), 1)
    @echo "FooBar"  <----- generate the error
    BAR += foobar
endif
 
# Targets
all: 
...
...

answered Feb 03 '22 at 18:32

nav

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score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 12 '20 at 13:13

5

Also, make sure you dont have a space after \ in previous line Else this is the error

answered Jun 12 '20 at 13:13

Sravya

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This is the sneaky one that got me, since the error message points to the line that isn't actually the problem – Eliezer Miron Mar 09 '23 at 18:11

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Sep 12 '19 at 11:56

1

It's a simple Mistake while adding a new file you just have to make sure that \ is added to the file before and the new file remain as it is eg.

Check Out what to do if i want to add a new file named customer.cc

edited Sep 12 '19 at 11:56

Snoobie

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answered Sep 12 '19 at 09:38

Siddharth Joshi

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 13 '20 at 13:44

0

This could also caused by mismatching brace/parenthesis.

$(TARGET}:
    do_something

Just use parenthesises and you'll be fine.

answered Jan 13 '20 at 13:44

Wesley

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19

"commence before first target. Stop." error

7 Answers7

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