[makefile] How to install and use "make" in Windows?

I'm following the instructions of someone whose repository I cloned to my machine. What I want is simple: to be able to use the make command as part of setting up the code environment. But I'm using Windows, and I searched online only to find a make.exe file to download, a make-4.1.tar.gz file to download (I don't know what to do with it next), and things about downloading MinGW (for GNU; but after installing it I didn't find any mention of "make").

I don't want a GNU compiler or related stuff; I only want to use "make" in Windows. Please tell me what I should do to accomplish that.

Thanks in advance!

GNU make is available on chocolatey.

• Install chocolatey from here.

• Then, choco install make.

Now you will be able to use Make on windows.
I've tried using it on MinGW, but it should work on CMD as well.

Download make.exe from their official site GnuWin32

• In the Download session, click Complete package, except sources.

• Follow the installation instructions.

• Once finished, add the <installation directory>/bin/ to the PATH variable.

Now you will be able to use make in cmd.

I could suggest a step by step approach.

1. Visit GNUwin
2. Download the Setup Program
3. Follow the instructions and install GNUWin. You should pay attention to the directory where your application is being installed. (You will need it later1)
4. Follow these instructions and add make to your environment variables. As I told you before, now it is time to know where your application was installed. FYI: The default directory is C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\.
5. Now, update the PATH to include the bin directory of the newly installed program. A typical example of what one might add to the path is: ...;C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin

One solution that may helpful if you want to use the command line emulator cmder. You can install the package installer chocately. First we install chocately in windows command prompt using the following line:

@"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
refreshenv

After chocolatey is installed the choco command can be used to install make. Once installed, you will need add an alias to /cmder/config/user_aliases.cmd. The following line should be added:

make="path_to_chocolatey\chocolatey\bin\make.exe" $*

Make will then operate in the cmder environment.

Another alternative is if you already installed minGW and added the bin folder the to Path environment variable, you can use "mingw32-make" instead of "make".

You can also create a symlink from "make" to "mingw32-make", or copying and changing the name of the file. I would not recommend the options before, they will work until you do changes on the minGW.

1. Install npm
2. install Node
3. Install Make node install make up node install make if above commands displays any error then install Chocolatey(choco) Open cmd and copy and paste the below command (command copied from chocolatey URL) @"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command " [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"

The accepted answer is a bad idea in general because the manually created make.exe will stick around and can potentially cause unexpected problems. It actually breaks RubyInstaller: https://github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller2/issues/105

An alternative is installing make via Chocolatey (as pointed out by @Vasantha Ganesh K)

Another alternative is installing MSYS2 from Chocolatey and using make from C:\tools\msys64\usr\bin. If make isn't installed automatically with MSYS2 you need to install it manually via pacman -S make (as pointed out by @Thad Guidry and @Luke).

1. Install Msys2 http://www.msys2.org
2. Follow installation instructions
3. Install make with $ pacman -S make gettext base-devel
4. Add C:\msys64\usr\bin\ to your path

If you're using Windows 10, it is built into the Linux subsystem feature. Just launch a Bash prompt (press the Windows key, then type bash and choose "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows"), cd to the directory you want to make and type make.

FWIW, the Windows drives are found in /mnt, e.g. C:\ drive is /mnt/c in Bash.

If Bash isn't available from your start menu, here are instructions for turning on that Windows feature (64-bit Windows only):

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10