How to run a makefile in Windows?

You can install GNU make with chocolatey, a well-maintained package manager, which will add make to the global path and runs on all CLIs (powershell, git bash, cmd, etc…) saving you a ton of time in both maintenance and initial setup to get make running.

Install the chocolatey package manager for Windows compatible to Windows 7+ / Windows Server 2003+ Run choco install make

I am not affiliated with choco, but I highly recommend it, so far it has never let me down and I do have a talent for breaking software unintentionally.

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If you have Visual Studio, run the Visual Studio Command prompt from the Start menu, change to the directory containing Makefile.win and type this:

nmake -f Makefile.win

You can also use the normal command prompt and run vsvars32.bat (c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools for VS2008). This will set up the environment to run nmake and find the compiler tools.

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Check out cygwin, a Unix alike environment for Windows

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Check out GnuWin's make (for windows), which provides a native port for Windows (without requiring a full runtime environment like Cygwin)

If you have winget, you can install via the CLI like this:

winget install GnuWin32.Make

Also, be sure to add the install path to your system PATH:

C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin

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Here is my quick and temporary way to run a Makefile

download make from SourceForge: gnuwin32

install it

go to the install folder

C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin

copy the all files in the bin to the folder that contains Makefile

libiconv2.dll libintl3.dll make.exe

open the cmd (you can do it with right click with shift) in the folder that contains Makefile and run

make.exe

done.

Plus, you can add arguments after the command, such as

make.exe skel

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If you install Cygwin. Make sure to select make in the installer. You can then run the following command provided you have a Makefile.

make -f Makefile

https://cygwin.com/install.html

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I tried all of the above. What helps me:

Download the mingw-get. Setup it. Add something like this C:\MinGW\bin to environment variables. Launch (!important) git bash. Power shell, developer vs cmd, system cmd etc didn't help. Type mingw-get into the command line. After type mingw-get install mingw32-make.

Done! Now You might be able to use make-commands from any folder that contains Makefile.

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With Visual Studio 2017 I had to add this folder to my Windows 10 path env variable:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.10.25017\bin\HostX64\x64

There's also HostX86

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I use MinGW tool set which provides mingw32-make build tool, if you have it in your PATH system variables, in Windows Command Prompt just go into the directory containing the files and type this command:

mingw32-make -f Makefile.win

and it's done.

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If it is a "NMake Makefile", that is to say the syntax and command is compatible with NMake, it will work natively on Windows. Usually Makefile.win (the .win suffix) indicates it's a makefile compatible with Windows NMake. So you could try nmake -f Makefile.win.

Often standard Linux Makefiles are provided and NMake looks promising. However, the following link takes a simple Linux Makefile and explains some fundamental issues that one may encounter. It also suggests a few alternatives to handling Linux Makefiles on Windows.

Makefiles in Windows

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Firstly, add path of visual studio common tools (c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\Tools) into the system path. To learn how to add a path into system path, please check this website: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000549.htm. You just need to this once.

After that, whenever you need, open a command line and execute vsvars32.bat to add all required visual studio tools' paths into the system path.

Then, you can call nmake -f makefile.mak

PS: Path of visual studio common tools might be different in your system. Please change it accordingly.

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I tried with cygwin & gnuwin, and didn't worked for me, I guess because the makefile used mainly specific linux code.

What it worked was use Ubuntu Bash for Windows 10. This is a Marvel if you come from MAC as it is my case:

To install the Ubuntu Bash: https://itsfoss.com/install-bash-on-windows/ Once in the console, to install make simply type "make" and it gives the instructions to download it.

Extras:

Useful enable copy / paste on bash: Copy Paste in Bash on Ubuntu on Windows In my case the make called Maven, so I have to install it as well: https://askubuntu.com/questions/722993/unable-to-locate-package-maven To access windows filesystem C: drive, for example: "cd /mnt/c/"

Hope it helps

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Install msys2 with make dependency add both to PATH variable. (The second option is GNU ToolChain for Windows. MinGW version has already mingw32-make included.)

Install Git Bash. Run mingw32-make from Git Bash.

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Download from https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/ Set the variable path in advance setting for recognize in command prompt (C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin)

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If you have already installed the Windows GNU compiler (MinGW) from MSYS2 then make command comes pre-installed as wingw32-make. Always match cmake makefile generation with the correct make command. Mixing these generate problems.

MinGW makefile generation with MinGW make command

Visual Studio makefile generation with VS equivalent make command

And this is always possible as long as you have the source code. Just delete old build directory and start over by specifying this time the right parameter in cmake ,e.g.

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "MinGW MakeFiles" path/to/src/whereCMakeLists.txtInstructionsAre   
mingw32-make     
myProject.exe   # RUN

I have encountered issues during compilation where multiple make commands interact. To prevent this just edit/remove the environmental variables that lead to different make commands. For example to prevent conflicts with mingw, keep only C:\msys64\mingw64\bin but remove C:\msys64\usr\bin. That other path contains the msys make and as I said you do not want to combine make commands during compilation.

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I am assuming you added mingw32/bin is added to environment variables else please add it and I am assuming it as gcc compiler and you have mingw installer.

First step: download mingw32-make.exe from mingw installer, or please check mingw/bin folder first whether mingw32-make.exe exists or not, else than install it, rename it to make.exe.

After renaming it to make.exe, just go and run this command in the directory where makefile is located. Instead of renaming it you can directly run it as mingw32-make.

After all, a command is just exe file or a software, we use its name to execute the software, we call it as command.

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So if you're using Vscode and Mingw then you should first make sure that the bin folder of the mingw is included in the environment path and it is preferred to change the mingw32-make.exe to make to ease the task and then create a makefile and include this code in it .

all:
    gcc -o filename filename.c
    ./filename

Then save the makefile and open Vscode Code terminal and write make. Then makefile will get executed.

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May be it can work.

pip install Makefile

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