Target pattern contains no ‘%’. Makefile

Question or issue on macOS:

I have searched this problem in google, but still don’t have some way to resolve a problem. I have 2 Makefiles: One as example and one as my file.
Example:

BINDDIR=/src/binding
XBUILD=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild
PROJECT_ROOT=XMBindingLibrarySample
PROJECT=$(PROJECT_ROOT)/XMBindingLibrarySample.xcodeproj
TARGET=XMBindingLibrarySample
BTOUCH=/Developer/MonoTouch/usr/bin/btouch

 XMBindingLibrary.dll
libXMBindingLibrarySample-i386.a:
$(XBUILD) -project $(PROJECT) -target $(TARGET) -sdk iphonesimulator -configuration Release clean build -mv $(PROJECT_ROOT)/build/Release-iphonesimulator/lib$(TARGET).a [email protected]
libXMBindingLibrarySample-armv6.a:
$(XBUILD) -project $(PROJECT) -target $(TARGET) -sdk iphoneos -arch armv6 -configuration Release clean      build -mv $(PROJECT_ROOT)/build/Release-iphoneos/lib$(TARGET).a [email protected]

libXMBindingLibrarySample-armv7.a:
$(XBUILD) -project $(PROJECT) -target $(TARGET) -sdk iphoneos -arch armv7 -configuration Release clean build -mv $(PROJECT_ROOT)/build/Release-iphoneos/lib$(TARGET).a [email protected]

libXMBindingLibrarySampleUniversal.a: libXMBindingLibrarySample-armv7.a libXMBindingLibrarySample-i386.a
lipo -create -output [email protected] $^

XMBindingLibrary.dll: AssemblyInfo.cs XMBindingLibrarySample.cs extras.cs libXMBindingLibrarySampleUniversal.a

$(BTOUCH) -unsafe --outdir=tmp -out:[email protected] XMBindingLibrarySample.cs -x=AssemblyInfo.cs -x=extras.cs --link-with=libXMBindingLibrarySampleUniversal.a,libXMBindingLibrarySampleUniversal.a

clean:
-rm -f *.a *.dll

My file:

BTOUCH=/Developer/MonoTouch/usr/bin/btouch
BINDDIR=/src/binding
XBUILD=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild
PROJECT_ROOT=IIViewDeckControllerSample
PROJECT=$(PROJECT_ROOT)/IIViewDeckController.xcodeproj
TARGET=IIViewDeckController

all: IIViewDeckController.dll

libIIViewDeckController-i386.a:
$(XBUILD) -project $(PROJECT) -target $(TARGET) -sdk iphonesimulator -configuration Release clean build -mv $(PROJECT_ROOT)/build/Release-iphonesimulator/lib$(TARGET).a [email protected]

libIIViewDeckController-armv7.a:
$(XBUILD) -project $(PROJECT) -target $(TARGET) -sdk iphoneos -arch armv7 -configuration Release clean build  -mv $(PROJECT_ROOT)/build/Release-iphoneos/lib$(TARGET).a [email protected]

libIIViewDeckControllerUniversal.a: libIIViewDeckController-armv7.a libIIViewDeckController-i386.a
lipo -create -output [email protected] $^

IIViewDeckController.dll: AssemblyInfo.cs APIDefinition.cs StructsAndEnums.cs libIIViewDeckControllerUniversal.a
$(BTOUCH) -unsafe  -out:[email protected] APIDefinition.cs -x=AssemblyInfo.cs -x=StructsAndEnums.cs --link-with=libIIViewDeckControllerUniversal.a,libIIViewDeckControllerUniversal.a

clean:
-rm -f *.a *.dll

With example file everything is OK, with mine I have Error:

Makefile:4: *** target pattern contains no `%'.  Stop.
make: *** [all] Error 2

How to solve this problem?

Solution no. 1:

This is a badly written error message from Make. It means “one of your filenames had a character that could be part of a regular expression”. Make is very naive about filesystems and quoting. It doesn’t believe that:

foo:  'The bar.'

refers to a literal string. It takes The as one word, bar. as another word, and then barfs on the period. Do this instead:

foo:  The\ bar\.

or in your case, backslash to the period in .xcodeproj.

Solution no. 2:

This won’t work:

default:
        echo "Hello world!"

This will:

default:
        echo "Hello world!"

Can you spot the difference?

That’s right, the first one has spaces, the second one has tabs. The one with spaces will give you:

Makefile:2: *** missing separator. Stop.

And this is why we cannot have nice things…

Solution no. 3:

This error occurred for me because I had a rule of the form

foo: bar: baz 

(note the trailing :).

Solution no. 4:

Make sure there is no : in your path, i.e. cd ${url} => ://. If so, escape it like this:

cd ${url} => \:// 

Solution no. 5:

Solved:
just go to the project tab it will present on vertical tab section then go to general and just change the location of project

Solution no. 6:

I had this problem if there was a colon in the target file name (i.e. a time stamp), for example:

 all: foo_01:34.txt foo_%.txt: bar_%.txt foobar $< > [email protected] 

I had to escape it:

 all: foo_01\:34.txt foo_%.txt: bar_%.txt foobar $< > [email protected] 

Solution no. 7:

Drop the line 11 on https://github.com/mkovalyk/IIViewDeckControllerBinding/blob/master/src/binding/Makefile. %' is not recognised by make

Hope this helps!