make is a GNU command, so the only way you can get it on Windows is installing a Windows version like the one provided by GNUWin32. Anyway, there are several options for getting that:
Directly download from Make for Windows
Using Chocolatey. First, you need to install this package manager. Once installed, you simply need to install
make(you may need to run it in an elevated/administrator command prompt):choco install makeAnother recommended option is installing a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL or WSL 2), so you'll have a Linux distribution of your choice embedded in Windows 10, where you'll be able to install
make,gcc, and all the tools you need to build C programs.For older Windows versions (Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or Windows 7 with msvcrt.dll) you can use GnuWin32.
An outdated alternative was MinGW, but the project seems to be abandoned, so it's better to go for one of the previous choices.
Answer from Eduardo Yáñez Parareda on Stack Overflowmake is a GNU command, so the only way you can get it on Windows is installing a Windows version like the one provided by GNUWin32. Anyway, there are several options for getting that:
Directly download from Make for Windows
Using Chocolatey. First, you need to install this package manager. Once installed, you simply need to install
make(you may need to run it in an elevated/administrator command prompt):choco install makeAnother recommended option is installing a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL or WSL 2), so you'll have a Linux distribution of your choice embedded in Windows 10, where you'll be able to install
make,gcc, and all the tools you need to build C programs.For older Windows versions (Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or Windows 7 with msvcrt.dll) you can use GnuWin32.
An outdated alternative was MinGW, but the project seems to be abandoned, so it's better to go for one of the previous choices.
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.
how to install 'make' on Windows?
unix - Why always ./configure; make; make install; as 3 separate steps? - Stack Overflow
I want an extreme minimal Windows 10 install
Run a DHCP server in windows 10
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Make is a general purpose workflow program, usually used for compilation. But it can be used for anything.
When you do something like "make all", the make program executes a rule named "all" from a file in current directory named "Makefile". This rule usually calls the compiler to compile some source code into binaries.
When you do "make install", the make program takes the binaries from the previous step and copies them into some appropriate locations so that they can be accessed. Unlike on Windows, installation just requires copying some libraries and executables and there is no registry requirement as such. In short, "make install" just copies compiled files into appropriate locations.
make install does whatever the Makefile author wants it to do. Typically, by this point, it is too late to change the install directory, as it is often known earlier, during the build, so help files and configuration files can be referenced with the correct pathnames.
Many projects use the GNU Autotools to try to improve their portability among hardware and operating system differences. (Different Unix variants use slightly different headers for declarations of functions that are slightly off the usual path -- except most programs need one or another of the ones declared in different locations.)
When a project does use the Autotools, the normal mantra to install it is:
./configure
make
make install
The ./configure typically allows you to use a command line option like --prefix /opt/apache or something similar to specify a different pathname. /usr/local/ is a common default prefix. It is far easier for locally built software to live in one place and distribution-provided software to live in the "main directories": /usr/ /bin/, and so on. (Packagers are very careful to never touch files in /usr/local/ -- they know it is exclusively for system administrators.)
Anyway, the ./configure --prefix /path/to/new/prefix will set a variable in the Makefile that is available when compiling the program, modifying the manual pages so they point to the correct locations for files, modifying configuration files, etc. So make will build the software specifically for the install location you want and make install will install it into that location.
Most programs can run even without the final make install step -- just ./program_name will often start them up. This is definitely a per-project thing -- some, like postfix, qmail, etc., are made up of many different moving pieces and rely on them all working together. Others, like ls or su might be self-contained enough to execute fine from the directory they were built in. (This is not often useful -- but sometimes very useful.)
However, not all projects use the Autotools -- they are huge, complicated, and miserable to maintain. Hand-written Makefiles are much simpler to write, and I personally think just distributing a simple Makefile with configuration variables available is a lot easier on developers and users both. (Though the ./configure ; make ; make install mantra is really easy on users when it works.)
Can anyone tell me the simplest and safest way to install make on windows? I have linux shell if that could make things easier.
I searched online and it takes me to sketchy websites with unsecured connection or tell me to install random packages like chocolaty etc-
Because each step does different things
Prepare(setup) environment for building
./configure
This script has lots of options that you should change. Like --prefix or --with-dir=/foo. That means every system has a different configuration. Also ./configure checks for missing libraries that should be installed. Anything wrong here causes not to build your application. That's why distros have packages that are installed on different places, because every distro thinks it's better to install certain libraries and files to certain directories. It is said to run ./configure, but in fact you should change it always.
For example have a look at the Arch Linux packages site. Here you'll see that any package uses a different configure parameter (assume they are using autotools for the build system).
Building the system
make
This is actually make all by default. And every make has different actions to do. Some do building, some do tests after building, some do checkout from external SCM repositories. Usually you don't have to give any parameters, but again some packages execute them differently.
Install to the system
make install
This installs the package in the place specified with configure. If you want you can specify ./configure to point to your home directory. However, lots of configure options are pointing to /usr or /usr/local. That means then you have to use actually sudo make install because only root can copy files to /usr and /usr/local.
Now you see that each step is a pre-requirement for next step. Each step is a preparation to make things work in a problemless flow. Distros use this metaphor to build packages (like RPM, deb, etc.).
Here you'll see that each step is actually a different state. That's why package managers have different wrappers. Below is an example of a wrapper that lets you build the whole package in one step. But remember that each application has a different wrapper (actually these wrappers have a name like spec, PKGBUILD, etc.):
def setup:
... #use ./configure if autotools is used
def build:
... #use make if autotools is used
def install:
... #use make all if autotools is used
Here one can use autotools, that means ./configure, make and make install. But another one can use SCons, Python related setup or something different.
As you see splitting each state makes things much easier for maintaining and deployment, especially for package maintainers and distros.
First, it should be ./configure && make && make install since each depends on the success of the former. Part of the reason is evolution and part of the reason is convenience for the development workflow.
Originally, most Makefiles would only contain the commands to compile a program and installation was left to the user. An extra rule allows make install to place the compiled output in a place that might be correct; there are still plenty of good reasons that you might not want to do this, including not being the system administrator, not want to install it at all. Moreover, if I am developing the software, I probably don't want to install it. I want to make some changes and test the version sitting in my directory. This becomes even more salient if I'm going to have multiple versions lying around.
./configure goes and detects what is available in the environment and/or is desired by the user to determine how to build the software. This is not something that needs to change very often and can often take some time. Again, if I am a developer, it's not worth the time to reconfigure constantly. More importantly, since make uses timestamps to rebuild modules, if I rerun configure there is a possibility that flags will change and now some of the components in my build will be compile with one set of flags and others with a different set of flags that might lead to different, incompatible behaviour. So long as I don't rerun configure, I know that my compilation environment remains the same even if I change my sources. If I rerun configure, I should make clean first, to remove any built sources to ensure things are built uniformly.
The only case where the three command are run in a row are when users install the program or a package is built (e.g., Debian's debuild or RedHat's rpmbuild). And that assumes that the package can be given a plain configure, which is not usually the case for packaging, where, at least, --prefix=/usr is desired. And pacakgers are like to have to deal with fake-roots when doing the make install part. Since there are lots of exceptions, making ./configure && make && make install the rule would be inconvenient for a lot of people who do it on a far more frequent basis!