Question: I got this error while (re)building, using cygwin make.exe version :3.81.

```
Error : *** target pattern contains no `%'.

```

Answer: 
Most likely due to the presence of a colon following a drive letter. For example consider

```
build : $(NativeHeaders)/*

```

If 

```
NativeHeaders=../../../cpp/generated

```

then all is well, but

```
NativeHeaders=C:/dev/folder/cpp/generated

```

results in the error that you get.
I had this problem on Linux when the build directory contained a ":" caused by doing a mercurial checkout which created a directory named "server:port".