How to fix Makefile *** missing separator. Stop.

Problem

You’re trying to run make on a Makefile, but you get an error like this:

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

Solution

This error is caused by a missing tab character at the beginning of a line in the Makefile. Make sure that all lines that are supposed to be commands in the Makefile start with a tab character.

Typically this error occurs because you use space indentation instead of tabs.