Installing Make

Before writing your first Makefile, you need GNU Make installed on your system. The good news is that Make comes pre-installed on most Linux systems and macOS. This tutorial covers installation on all major platforms and setting up your editor.

Check If Make Is Already Installed

Open a terminal and run:

make --version

If you see output like this, Make is already installed and you can skip ahead to the "Editor Setup" section:

GNU Make 4.3
Built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

If you get "command not found" or a similar error, follow the installation instructions for your operating system below.

Installing on Linux

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt update
sudo apt install make

For the full C/C++ development toolchain (includes the gcc compiler, make, and other useful build tools):

sudo apt install build-essential

Fedora / RHEL / CentOS

sudo dnf install make

Or for the full development toolchain:

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S make

Or for the full base development package:

sudo pacman -S base-devel

Installing on macOS

Using Xcode Command Line Tools (Recommended)

macOS doesn't ship with Make by default, but it's included in the Xcode Command Line Tools:

xcode-select --install

A dialog box will appear asking you to install the tools. Click "Install" and wait for the download to complete. This also installs a C compiler and other useful developer tools.

Using Homebrew

If you use Homebrew (a popular package manager for macOS):

brew install make

echo 'alias make="gmake"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Installing on Windows

Using WSL (Recommended)

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) gives you a full Linux environment inside Windows. This is the best way to use Make on Windows because Make was designed for Unix-like systems.

Step 1: Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

wsl --install

Step 2: Restart your computer when prompted.

Step 3: Open the WSL terminal (search for "Ubuntu" in the Start menu) and set up your Linux username and password.

Step 4: Install Make inside WSL:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential

Now you can use make inside the WSL terminal just like on a native Linux system.

Using Chocolatey

If you prefer to use Make directly in Windows (without WSL):

choco install make

Using MSYS2

MSYS2 provides a Unix-like environment on Windows:

Step 1: Download and install MSYS2 from msys2.org

Step 2: Open the MSYS2 terminal and run:

pacman -S make

Using Git Bash

If you have Git for Windows installed, you already have Git Bash — a minimal Unix-like terminal. However, Make isn't included by default. The easiest approach is to use Chocolatey or WSL instead.

Verify Your Installation

After installing, verify Make is working correctly:

make --version

You should see something like:

GNU Make 4.3
Built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Copyright (C) 1988-2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later

The exact version number may differ, but anything 3.81 or above will work for all our tutorials.

Editor Setup

VS Code (Recommended)

VS Code has excellent Makefile support with extensions:

Step 1: Open VS Code

Step 2: Go to the Extensions panel (click the square icon on the sidebar, or press Ctrl+Shift+X)

Step 3: Search for "Makefile Tools" by Microsoft and install it

This extension provides syntax highlighting (colors for different parts of the Makefile), IntelliSense (auto-completion suggestions), and build task integration.

Step 4 (Important!): Configure VS Code to use tabs for Makefiles. Open your settings file (Ctrl+Shift+P → "Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)") and add:

{
  "[makefile]": {
    "editor.insertSpaces": false,
    "editor.tabSize": 4,
    "editor.detectIndentation": false
  }
}

This tells VS Code: "When editing a Makefile, use real tab characters instead of spaces." This is critical — we'll explain why in the next section.

Vim / Neovim

Vim has built-in Makefile syntax highlighting — no additional setup needed. Vim also automatically uses tabs for Makefiles through its filetype detection.

Sublime Text

Install the Makefile Improved package through Package Control for better syntax highlighting.

The Tab Requirement (Read This!)

This is the number one source of Makefile errors for beginners:

If you see this error:

Makefile:3: *** missing separator.  Stop.

It almost always means you used spaces instead of a tab character for the recipe indentation. Here's what correct and incorrect look like:

# CORRECT — indented with a tab
hello:
	echo "This works!"
 
# WRONG — indented with spaces (looks the same but will fail!)
hello:
    echo "This will cause an error"

They look identical on screen, but the first uses a tab character and the second uses spaces. Your editor needs to be configured to insert tabs when editing Makefiles (see the Editor Setup section above).

How to Check If Your File Uses Tabs

You can check if your Makefile uses tabs with this command:

cat -A Makefile

Tab characters show as ^I:

hello: hello.c
^Igcc hello.c -o hello

If you see spaces instead of ^I before the command, your editor is inserting spaces and you need to change the setting.

Create a Test Makefile

Let's verify everything works with a minimal test. Create a new directory and a Makefile:

mkdir make-test
cd make-test

Create a file named Makefile (with a capital M, no file extension) with this content:

hello:
	echo "Hello from Make!"

Now run it:

make

You should see:

echo "Hello from Make!"
Hello from Make!

Why are there two lines of output? Make prints the command it's about to run (the echo ... line) and then the actual output of that command (Hello from Make!). We'll learn how to suppress the command echo in the next tutorial.

If this works, your Make installation is ready! Clean up the test directory:

cd ..
rm -rf make-test

Summary

You should now have GNU Make installed and working:

• Linux: Install with your package manager — sudo apt install build-essential (Ubuntu/Debian), sudo dnf install make (Fedora), or sudo pacman -S make (Arch)
• macOS: Install with xcode-select --install or brew install make
• Windows: Use WSL (recommended), Chocolatey, or MSYS2
• Editor: Configure your editor to use tabs (not spaces) for Makefiles — this is critical
• Verify: Run make --version to confirm the installation

In the next tutorial, you'll write your first real Makefile with targets, prerequisites, and recipes.

mkdir test-make && cd test-make

test:
	echo "Make is working!"

echo "Make is working!"
Make is working!

cd ..
rm -rf test-make