How to run a makefile in Windows?

Windows Problem Overview

I have some demos that I downloaded and they come with a Makefile.win and a Makefile.sgi. How can I run these in Windows to compile the demos?

Windows Solutions

Solution 1 - 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.

Solution 2 - Windows

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.

Solution 3 - Windows

Check out cygwin, a Unix alike environment for Windows

Solution 4 - Windows

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

Solution 5 - Windows

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

Solution 6 - Windows

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

Solution 7 - Windows

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.

Solution 8 - Windows

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

Solution 9 - Windows

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.

Solution 10 - Windows

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

Solution 11 - Windows

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.

Solution 12 - Windows

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: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38832230/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

Solution 13 - Windows

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)

Solution 14 - Windows

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.

Solution 15 - Windows

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.

Solution 16 - Windows

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.

Solution 17 - Windows

> May be it can work.

pip install Makefile

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Kim	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Windows	ledawg	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Windows	Marcelo Cantos	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Windows	Frank	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Windows	Sean Lynch	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Windows	alan9uo	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Windows	sunny0402	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Windows	binary robot	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Windows	Jón Trausti Arason	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Windows	WENDYN	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - Windows	ap-osd	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - Windows	Validus Oculus	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 12 - Windows	Oriol Manyà Pau	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 13 - Windows	Amit Kumar	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 14 - Windows	Liam Kernighan	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 15 - Windows	Sudarshan Vemarapu	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 16 - Windows	Lovish Garg	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 17 - Windows	Nikhil Parashar	View Answer on Stackoverflow