[makefile] "commence before first target. Stop." error

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

How to solve this problem?

This question is related to makefile

The answer is


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.


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.


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.


This could also caused by mismatching brace/parenthesis.

$(TARGET}:
    do_something

Just use parenthesises and you'll be fine.


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


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