As Documentation/process/changes.rst says, Kbuild now depends on GNU Make 3.81 or later.
If invoked with older versions, it fails with an unclear error message. $ make defconfig HOSTCC scripts/basic/fixdep scripts/Makefile.host:135: *** missing separator. Stop. make: *** [defconfig] Error 2 Stop building with a clearer message: Makefile:16: *** GNU Make >= 3.81 is required. You are running version 3.80. Stop. I borrowed the idea from Buildroot. Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masah...@socionext.com> --- Makefile | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile index d8b5c4230da0..5baaebf8f23a 100644 --- a/Makefile +++ b/Makefile @@ -10,6 +10,12 @@ NAME = Fearless Coyote # Comments in this file are targeted only to the developer, do not # expect to learn how to build the kernel reading this file. +# Check Make version (note: this check will break at Make 10.x) +MIN_MAKE_VERSION := 3.81 +ifneq ($(firstword $(sort $(MAKE_VERSION) $(MIN_MAKE_VERSION))),$(MIN_MAKE_VERSION)) +$(error GNU Make >= $(MIN_MAKE_VERSION) is required. You are running version $(MAKE_VERSION)) +endif + # o Do not use make's built-in rules and variables # (this increases performance and avoids hard-to-debug behaviour); # o Look for make include files relative to root of kernel src -- 2.7.4
