Kinetis Design Studio, build error: make: *** missing separator. Stop.

[helloworld1]

Myself and a co-worker are working from the same codebase using Kinetis Design Studio V3.2.0. We both created new workspaces and imported projects from the same repo (File -> Import -> General -> Existing Projects into Workspace).

However, when I build the project, mine fails with the below error whereas my co-worker's does not: 

15:34:20 **** Build of configuration Debug for project <PROJECT NAME> ****
make -k -j12 all
makefile:1: warning: NUL character seen; rest of line ignored
makefile:1: *** missing separator. Stop.

The makefile in question is an auto-generated makefile. I cross-checked our project settings (includes, paths, etc.) and everything is the same. 

What else could I be missing on my end?

[ErichStyger]

usually this happens if you use spaces instead of tabs as separator in the make file.

So you maybe you have loaded that make file and saved it with spaces instead of tabs?

I would delete the 'build' folder and try again, if this helps.

Erich

[helloworld1]

Not sure that's the problem since the makefile in question is auto-generated, unless I'm missing something. 

I also just got my project to build by:

- Recloning my repo into a new directory on my PC.

- Setting the workspace as the directory in the repo that contains the Kinetis projects. 

This "work around" seems odd to me since my original workspace (what's referenced in my original post) was outside of my repo location (one directory back), and I had never worked in Kinetis before on the project, so it's not like any project settings conflicted with each other. At this point, I don't know why what I did worked, but it did.

I always hate accepting the "start from scratch" method as a solution, so I'd love to hear other explanations/theories for future reference.

[ErichStyger]

I assume that your build folder (Release, Debug, ..) is *not* part of the repository?

If so, it really should not be.

In any case: please try deleting the build output folder if this makes any difference.

>>- Setting the workspace as the directory in the repo that contains the Kinetis projects. 

This let me belive that you have not properly put your project into the VCS, and that you have included generated or derived files which do not belong into the repository.

And just in case if this is new to you: https://mcuoneclipse.com/2018/09/30/tutorial-git-with-eclipse/

I hope this helps,

Erich

[helloworld1]

Debug is the only build configuration I am running. And, for what it's worth:

$ cat .gitignore
## Ignore files
*/Debug/*
*/debug/*
*.o
*.a
*.d

Sorry I forgot say that I did delete it during my first attempts at getting things to build, and it didn't change anything.

I agree that some other build artifacts could be in our VCS. I assume since the Debug folder is not included, I should be ok. But, perhaps there are some other locations I am overlooking.

[ErichStyger]

that one looks ok. But is your setup with different machines (e.g. Mac and/or Windows)? I have seen issues and reports for cases where say on the MacOS machine a different file encoding is used?

Can you check the encoding of your files and folders, especially the one of the make file itself? It should be UTF-8.

I hope this helps,

Erich