How to run a makefile in Windows?

Question

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.

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.

1. Install the chocolatey package manager for Windows
   ^{compatible to Windows 7+ / Windows Server 2003+}

2. 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.

Check out cygwin, a Unix alike environment for 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

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