How to set up 'make' on Windows [Tutorial]

Small tutorial on setting up make on windows. Needed that for a tutorial on Docker I'm currently working on and thought it was easier to just make a small video instead of using screenshots.

Steps:
- Set up 'mingw-get' (basically 'apt-get')
- Install 'mingw32-make' via 'mingw-get install mingw32-make'
- Open a new shell and type 'make'

[michaelslifecycle]

In cs50 they just went straight into teaching us code on VS code and completely skipped telling us how to set it up. I was completely dumbfounded getting so many error messages just trying to type hello, world XD

I can't believe this is the only tutorial online and this took me 2 hours to do lol. Thank you so much!

[smarttradzt]

for those having trouble with windows 64bit incompatibility...here's the solution (copied from another comment hidden at the bottom..

"This fixed the 64 bit issue for me. Thanks!
Here's the translation. Google translate did a good job though.

"
This is what worked for me:
0. Delete the "make" or "make.exe" if you have already created them
1. Open cmd [Make sure to run as admin]
2. "cd C:\MinGW\bin" (may differ if MinGW is in a different path)
3. "mklink make.exe mingw32-make.exe"
I hope it works
"

[kjafhjfajshf]

It's the best tutorial, i've found. I have spend half a day without success trying to run make. And finally run in after this 6min video. Many-many thanks for that!!!!

[cranstonmcmegido]

If you had issues with the last part like I did, you need to save the make file as a batch and remove the $* part.

[DontSnowMe]

I had issues with the last part as well. I made a copy of the mingw32-make.exe file and renamed it make.exe

[TXORN-hwtw]

I've been searching the web for hours trying to find a solution. THANK YOU SO MUCH

[lucaskikkawa]

Thanks for the video. From Brazil my friend.

Never say you're sorry for being German, be proud!

[BorlandC]

Would you be able to just rename the file "mingw32-make.exe" to "make.exe"? I did that with my install of MinGW, and no problems so far. As long as none of the other paths in the PATH environment variable have a "make.exe" executable I would think it would be fine.

[koderchit]

Great tutorial, Please try to zoom it on the important details, Sometimes they are not visible even in 1080p.

[awake]

Thanks you very much man, everything finally works!
on a side note, I didn't have anything installed to work with C beforehand, turns out I forgot to install GCC, did it through MinGW and now everything is fine

[medhannioui]

I created the file 'bin/make' with the content 'mingw32-make.exe $*' but it didn't work. As you mentioned it, i tried to add the 'exe' extension ('make.exe') but it didn't work either.

[jgoep]

"Sorry for being German…" – I was not prepared for such a political statement :D

[billyjoe]

How did you open that min64gw cmd window? You never said that in the video.

[polymix]

You can just rename the mingw32-make.exe to make.exe

[bryangildelreal]

you can do everything from cmd line. Just go to bin folder. then copy exe file for a backup (copy mingw32-make.exe mingw32-make.exe.bak) then (ren mingw32-make.exe make.exe) then move to shell location, instead of adding path (copy make.exe C:\windows\system32\) and all relevant dll's (Copy *.dll c:\windows\system32\) or all files if you want (copy *.* C:\windows\system32)

Cheers

[kishanikandasamy]

At the end .make doesn't work.Right?

[blossomsu]

@PascalLandau :

Thanks ! You saved me a ton of work !

The Blog the Video and the description was helpful

[aryansingh]

hey there, I'm using Windows 11 now and when I tried following your steps, most worked fine but in the end when we make a proxy executable and run that, my computer throws an error saying that 32 bit software architecture is not supported. Is there anything I can do for that?

[juangabrielriveratmaayo]

when you install: " MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows" and you uncheck the option: " ... also install support for the graphical user interface" and you with the mouse cursor pointing the software mentioned before; you try to open the Git SCM Git BASH; what is the keyboard shortcut to do that ?

[pratyushtripathy]

When I finally call make, it says "This version of C:\MinGW\bin\make.exe is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information and then contact the software publisher". When I try to install mingw64-make, it says "mingw-get: *** ERROR *** mingw64-make: unknown package".