I have Makefile that contains tabified line echo $(foo) and untabified line ifneq (,$(findstring i, $(MAKEFLAGS))):
bar =
foo = $(bar)
all:
echo $(foo)
ifneq (,$(findstring i, $(MAKEFLAGS)))
echo "i was passed to MAKEFLAGS"
endif
If I untabify echo $(foo) I got error:
Makefile:5: *** missing separator. Stop.
Why some lines should be tabified while other ones – not?
>Solution :
Because, that’s the syntax makefiles use. Why do you have to indent the body of methods in Python? Because that’s the syntax.
Makefiles consist of two different "languages" in the same file. Lines that are not indented by TAB are makefile format. Lines that are indented by TAB are shell scripts. Make uses TAB to differentiate the two.
See the GNU make manual for more info.