diff --git a/ws/Docbook/Preprocess/make.rules b/ws/Docbook/Preprocess/make.rules
index f7cd82dc14f736dbeb003daf4d83cde7b0756105..b7c34d9f813dfe56dd1d768e79f9428100c33323 100644
--- a/ws/Docbook/Preprocess/make.rules
+++ b/ws/Docbook/Preprocess/make.rules
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+ifndef SCRIPTBASENAME
+$(error SCRIPTBASENAME must be defined to your root documents basename)
+endif
+
 SHELL = /bin/bash
 DIR := ${CURDIR}
 numCores=$(shell nproc --all)