If you’re building a Linux initramfs into your kernel image via CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE=”/path/to/some/directory” and make dies with “target pattern contains no `%'”, check if /path/to/some/directory has a file with ‘:’ in the name. If it does, get rid of it (assuming it’s not needed…). What’s happening is that we use the list of files in the initramfs as dependencies to make to know when to rebuild the initramfs, and the ‘:’ in the middle of the dependency list freaks make out.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled torture of getting aic94xx to load its firmware from the initramfs.
Muli Ben-Yehuda's journal 