1 This version of GNU Make has been tested on:
2 Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7/8/10
3 It has also been used on Windows 95/98/NT, and on OS/2.
5 It builds with the MinGW port of GCC (tested with GCC 3.4.2, 4.8.1,
8 It also builds with MSVC 2.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012,
9 2013, and 2015 as well as with .NET 7.x and .NET 2003.
11 Building with Guile is supported (tested with Guile 2.0.x). To build
12 with Guile, you will need, in addition to Guile itself, its dependency
13 libraries and the pkg-config program. The latter is used to figure out
14 which compilation and link switches and libraries need to be mentioned
15 on the compiler command lines to correctly link with Guile. A Windows
16 port of pkg-config can be found on ezwinports site:
18 https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/
20 The libraries on which Guile depends can vary depending on your
21 version and build of Guile. At the very least, the Boehm's GC library
22 will be needed, and typically also GNU MP, libffi, libunistring, and
23 libtool's libltdl. Whoever built the port of Guile you have should
24 also provide you with these dependencies or a URL where to download
25 them. A precompiled 32-bit Windows build of Guile is available from
26 the ezwinports site mentioned above.
28 The Windows port of GNU Make is maintained jointly by various people.
29 It was originally made by Rob Tulloh.
30 It is currently maintained by Eli Zaretskii.
33 Do this first, regardless of the build method you choose:
34 ---------------------------------------------------------
36 1. If you have special requirements, edit config.h.W32 to your liking
37 (especially the shell-related defines, or HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS which
38 corresponds to './configure --enable-case-insensitive-file-system'). We
39 don't recommend to define HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS, but you may wish to
40 consider that if you have a lot of files whose names are in upper case,
41 while Makefile rules are written for lower-case versions.
43 If you don't have special requirements no changes are needed.
46 Building with (MinGW-)GCC using build_w32.bat
47 ---------------------------------------------
49 2. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed (MinGW-)GCC, setup a
50 correct PATH and other environment variables for it, then execute ...
54 This produces gnumake.exe in the GccRel directory.
56 If you want a version of GNU Make built with debugging enabled,
57 add the --debug option. Output goes into the GccDebug directory.
59 The batch file will probe for Guile installation, and will build
60 gnumake.exe with Guile if it finds it. If you have Guile
61 installed, but want to build Make without Guile support, type
63 .\build_w32.bat --without-guile gcc
66 Building with (MSVC++-)cl using build_w32.bat
67 ---------------------------------------------
69 2. Open a command shell, then execute ...
73 This produces a 64bit Release build of gnumake.exe in .\WinRel, using
74 the compiler found on the %Path%. If no compiler is found, the batch
75 file will probe your system and choose the newest MSVC version it can
78 If you want a 32bit version of GNU Make, add the --x86 option.
80 If you want a Debug build of GNU Make, add the --debug option. Output
81 will go into the .\WinDebug directory.
83 The batch file will probe for Guile installation, and will build
84 gnumake.exe with Guile if it finds it. If Guile is installed,
85 but you prefer to build GNU Make without Guile support, add the
86 --without-guile option.
89 Building with (MinGW-)GCC using GNU Make
90 ----------------------------------------
92 2. If you already have a version of GNU Make available you can use it
93 to build this version. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed
94 (MinGW-)GCC, setup a correct PATH and other environment variables
95 for it, then execute ...
97 make -f Basic.mk TOOLCHAIN=gcc
99 This produces GccRel\gnumake.exe.
100 If you want a version of GNU Make built with debugging enabled,
101 add the TARGET_TYPE=debug option:
103 make -f Basic.mk TOOLCHAIN=gcc TARGET_TYPE=debug
105 The makefile doesn't support Guile integration. Use build_w32.bat
106 if you want to build with Guile support.
109 Building with (MSVC++-)cl using GNU Make
110 ----------------------------------------
112 2. If you already have a version of GNU Make available you can use it
113 to build this version. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed
114 (MSVC++-)cl, setup a correct PATH and other environment variables
115 for it (usually via executing vcvars32.bat or vsvars32.bat from the
116 cl-installation, or using a corresponding start menu entry from the
117 cl-installation), then execute ...
121 This produces an optimized WinRel/gnumake.exe.
122 If you want a version of GNU Make built with debugging enabled,
123 add the TARGET_TYPE=debug option:
125 make -f Basic.mk TARGET_TYPE=debug
127 The makefile doesn't support Guile integration. Use build_w32.bat
128 if you want to build with Guile support.
131 Running the test suite
132 ----------------------
134 3. You will need an installation of Perl. Be sure to use a relatively
135 modern version: older versions will sometimes throw spurious errors.
137 To run the suite after building using GNU Make, use:
139 make -f Basic.mk check
141 Alternatively if you'd like to run tests by hand, use:
144 .\run_make_tests.bat -make <path-to-make>
146 I've found <path-to-make> seems to want forward-slashes in the path.
147 For example if building with .\build_w32.bat non-debug, use:
150 .\run_make_tests.bat -make ../WinRel/gnumake.exe
152 I've tested this with the MSYS2 shell and POSIX tools installation
153 that you get by installing Git for Windows.
161 GNU Make on Windows 32-bit platforms:
163 This version of make is ported natively to Windows32 platforms
164 (Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP,
165 Windows 95, and Windows 98). It does not rely on any 3rd party
166 software or add-on packages for building. The only thing
167 needed is a Windows compiler. Two compilers supported
168 officially are the MinGW port of GNU GCC, and the various
169 versions of the Microsoft C compiler.
171 Do not confuse this port of GNU Make with other Windows32 projects
172 which provide a GNU Make binary. These are separate projects
173 and are not connected to this port effort.
177 This port prefers if you have a working sh.exe somewhere on
178 your system. If you don't have sh.exe, the port falls back to
179 MSDOS mode for launching programs (via a batch file). The
180 MSDOS mode style execution has not been tested that carefully
181 though (The author uses GNU bash as sh.exe).
183 There are very few true ports of Bourne shell for NT right now.
184 There is a version of GNU bash available from Cygnus "Cygwin"
185 porting effort (https://www.cygwin.com/).
186 Other possibilities are the MKS version of sh.exe, or building
187 your own with a package like NutCracker (DataFocus) or Portage
188 (Consensys). Also MinGW includes sh.
190 GNU Make and brain-dead shells (BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL):
192 Some versions of Bourne shell do not behave well when invoked
193 as 'sh -c' from CreateProcess(). The main problem is they seem
194 to have a hard time handling quoted strings correctly. This can
195 be circumvented by writing commands to be executed to a batch
196 file and then executing the command by calling 'sh file'.
198 To work around this difficulty, this version of make supports
199 a batch mode. When BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL is defined at compile
200 time, make forces all command lines to be executed via script
201 files instead of by command line. In this mode you must have a
202 working sh.exe in order to use parallel builds (-j).
204 A native Windows32 system with no Bourne shell will also run
205 in batch mode. All command lines will be put into batch files
206 and executed via $(COMSPEC) (%COMSPEC%). However, parallel
207 builds ARE supported with Windows shells (cmd.exe and
208 command.com). See the next section about some peculiarities
209 of parallel builds on Windows.
211 Support for parallel builds
213 Parallel builds (-jN) are supported in this port. The number of
214 concurrent processes has a hard limit of 4095.
216 GNU Make and Cygnus GNU Windows32 tools:
218 Good news! Make now has native support for Cygwin sh. To enable,
219 define the HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL in config.h and rebuild make
220 from scratch. This version of make tested with B20.1 of Cygwin.
221 Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you use HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL.
223 GNU Make and the MKS shell:
225 There is now semi-official support for the MKS shell. To turn this
226 support on, define HAVE_MKS_SHELL in the config.h.W32 before you
227 build make. Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you turn
230 GNU Make handling of drive letters in pathnames (PATH, vpath, VPATH):
232 There is a caveat that should be noted with respect to handling
233 single character pathnames on Windows systems. When colon is
234 used in PATH variables, make tries to be smart about knowing when
235 you are using colon as a separator versus colon as a drive
236 letter. Unfortunately, something as simple as the string 'x:/'
237 could be interpreted 2 ways: (x and /) or (x:/).
239 Make chooses to interpret a letter plus colon (e.g. x:/) as a
240 drive letter pathname. If it is necessary to use single
241 character directories in paths (VPATH, vpath, Path, PATH), the
242 user must do one of two things:
244 a. Use semicolon as the separator to disambiguate colon. For
245 example use 'x;/' if you want to say 'x' and '/' are
248 b. Qualify the directory name so that there is more than
249 one character in the path(s) used. For example, none
250 of these settings are ambiguous:
253 /some/path/x:/some/path/y
254 x:/some/path/x:x:/some/path/y
256 Please note that you are free to mix colon and semi-colon in the
257 specification of paths. Make is able to figure out the intended
258 result and convert the paths internally to the format needed
259 when interacting with the operating system, providing the path
260 is not within quotes, e.g. "x:/test/test.c".
262 You are encouraged to use colon as the separator character.
263 This should ease the pain of deciding how to handle various path
264 problems which exist between platforms. If colon is used on
265 both Unix and Windows systems, then no ifdef'ing will be
266 necessary in the makefile source.
268 Pathnames and white space:
270 Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems encourage pathnames which
271 contain white space (e.g. C:\Program Files\). These sorts of
272 pathnames are valid on Unix too, but are never encouraged.
273 There is at least one place in make (VPATH/vpath handling) where
274 paths containing white space will simply not work. There may be
275 others too. I chose to not try and port make in such a way so
276 that these sorts of paths could be handled. I offer these
277 suggestions as workarounds:
279 1. Use 8.3 notation. i.e. "x:/long~1/", which is actually
280 "x:\longpathtest". Type "dir /x" to view these filenames
281 within the cmd.exe shell.
282 2. Rename the directory so it does not contain white space.
284 If you are unhappy with this choice, this is free software
285 and you are free to take a crack at making this work. The code
286 in w32/pathstuff.c and vpath.c would be the places to start.
288 Pathnames and Case insensitivity:
290 Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems are case insensitive but case
291 preserving. For example if you tell the file system to create a
292 file named "Target", it will preserve the case. Subsequent access to
293 the file with other case permutations will succeed (i.e. opening a
294 file named "target" or "TARGET" will open the file "Target").
296 By default, GNU Make retains its case sensitivity when comparing
297 target names and existing files or directories. It can be
298 configured, however, into a case preserving and case insensitive
299 mode by adding a define for HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS to
302 For example, the following makefile will create a file named
303 Target in the directory subdir which will subsequently be used
304 to satisfy the dependency of SUBDIR/DepTarget on SubDir/TARGET.
305 Without HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS configured, the dependency link
311 SUBDIR/DepTarget: SubDir/TARGET
314 Reliance on this behavior also eliminates the ability of GNU Make
315 to use case in comparison of matching rules. For example, it is
316 not possible to set up a C++ rule using %.C that is different
317 than a C rule using %.c. GNU Make will consider these to be the
318 same rule and will issue a warning.
322 I have not had any success building the debug version of this
323 package using SAMBA as my file server. The reason seems to be
324 related to the way VC++ 4.0 changes the case name of the pdb
325 filename it is passed on the command line. It seems to change
326 the name always to to lower case. I contend that the VC++
327 compiler should not change the casename of files that are passed
328 as arguments on the command line. I don't think this was a
329 problem in MSVC 2.x, but I know it is a problem in MSVC 4.x.
331 The package builds fine on VFAT and NTFS filesystems.
333 Most all of the development I have done to date has been using
334 NTFS and long file names. I have not done any considerable work
335 under VFAT. VFAT users may wish to be aware that this port of
336 make does respect case sensitivity.
340 Version 3.76 added support for FAT filesystems. Make works
341 around some difficulties with stat'ing of files and caching of
342 filenames and directories internally.
346 Please submit bugs via the normal bug reporting mechanism which
347 is described in the GNU Make manual and the base README.
349 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
350 Copyright (C) 1996-2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
351 This file is part of GNU Make.
353 GNU Make is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
354 terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
355 Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
358 GNU Make is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
359 WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
360 A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
362 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
363 this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.