 <p>Make will read and operate on a makefile which is in the current directory, unless you specify a different one with <code>-f</code>. From your comments above it sounds like your current directory is not the right one when you run <code>make</code>, so it can't find the makefile</p> <p>You have to either run <code>make -f public/cards/gallery/Makefile card FILE=...</code>, to allow make to find your makefile, or else change working directories first with <code>make -C public/cards/gallery card FILE=...</code></p> <p>Also I find it unlikely that <code>FILE=public/cards/gallery/*</code> is going to work, because the wildcard <code>*</code> expands to ALL the files in the directory.</p>