Re: makefile:8: *** missing separator. Stop.

[Paul Smith]

On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 14:54 -0700, address@hidden wrote:
> Thanks Paul.
> 
> This thing is weird and since I got it off a BSD ports site and am  
> trying to run it on my Centos box, thats probably why.

Most likely it is written for BSD make and there's some feature of BSD
make that makefile uses that GNU make doesn't support.

Without seeing the content of line 8 of the makefile, I can't say for
sure, but as far as I know BSD make also requires a TAB as the first
character.

Also, GNU make tries to be helpful and if it detects a missing separator
on a line that starts with 8 spaces it will add a little note, like
"(did you mean TAB instead of 8 spaces?)"  Since you didn't see that
here, it's most likely something else.

Note that the message "missing separator" is GNU make's version of the
old BASIC "Syntax Error": it means make couldn't even begin to
understand what that line was trying to say.