Question

My makefile fails with error:

Makefile:34: *** multiple target patterns.  Stop.

What does it really mean, how can I fix this?

(GNU make manual, written by Captain Obvious, isn’t helping).

---

Found it. I had rule in form:

$(FOO): bar

where FOO was set from shell command that polluted it with error message that contained a colon.

Answer 1

I had it on the Makefile

MAPS+=reverse/db.901:550:2001.ip6.arpa 
lastserial:  ${MAPS}
    ./updateser ${MAPS}

It’s because of the : in the file name.
I solved this with

                      -------- notice
                     /    /
                    v    v
MAPS+=reverse/db.901\:550\:2001.ip6.arpa
lastserial:  ${MAPS}
    ./updateser ${MAPS}