 <p>See my answer to another similar question just posted this morning:</p> <p><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21366896/makefile-error-that-works-fine-in-console">Makefile error that works fine in console</a></p> <p>The error you see does <em>not</em> mean an error in the makefile. If there were, <code>make</code> would give information on what was wrong with your makefile and the linenumber in the makefile where it happened.</p> <p>The problem you have in both the above examples is you're trying to compile code that requires some development libraries (alsa in the first one, GTK in the second one) and you don't have them. You'll need to use your package manager to install them; exactly what commands you need and what package names you need depends entirely on which distribution of Linux (if you're using Linux) you have, and you don't give this information.</p> <p>Once your compile operations work, then you won't get this error from make.</p>