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

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

```

Answer: 
I got the same error when trying to build a project on Linux or OSX, that was previously built on a Windows machine and had some **.o.d** files hanging around in the output folder. 

Once I manually deleted the **.o.d** files the problem was resolved. Apparently the "Clean" command of my IDE (CodeLite in this case) wasn't deleting the **.o.d** files.
In my case I was using CMake under Cygwin when I got this error. It turned out the Windows version of CMake was executed. Subsequently, Windows paths were used in the make file. I installed Cygwin's version of CMake through the setup program and got it working.