"multiple target patterns" Makefile error

Solution 1:

I had it on the Makefile

MAPS+=reverse/db.901:550:2001.ip6.arpa 
lastserial:  ${MAPS}
    ./updateser ${MAPS}

It's because of the : in the file name. I solved this with

                      -------- notice
                     /    /
                    v    v
MAPS+=reverse/db.901\:550\:2001.ip6.arpa
lastserial:  ${MAPS}
    ./updateser ${MAPS}

Solution 2:

Besides having to escape colons as in the original answer, I have found if the indentation is off you could potentially get the same problem. In one makefile, I had to replace spaces with a tab and that allowed me to get past the error.