How to use GNU Make on Windows?

Explanation

Inside directory C:\MinGW\bin there is an executable file mingw32-make.exe which is the program make you are trying to run. You can use the keyword mingw32-make and run the program make since you have added the needed directory to the system path, but it is not an easy to remember keyword.

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Solution

Renaming the file from mingw32-make.exe to make.exe will allow you to run program make using the keyword make.

Renaming can be done:

1. Manually by right clicking and renaming the file.
2. By running the command copy c:\MinGW\bin\mingw32-make.exe c:\MinGW\bin\make.exe.

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Result

Now if you type make on command prompt it should output something like:

make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

Which means the program make ran.

Although this question is old, it is still asked by many who use MSYS2.

I started to use it this year to replace CygWin, and I'm getting pretty satisfied.

To install make, open the MSYS2 shell and type the following commands:

# Update the package database and core system packages
pacman -Syu
# Close shell and open again if needed

# Update again
pacman -Su

# Install make
pacman -S make

# Test it (show version)
make -v

I'm using GNU Make from the GnuWin32 project, see http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ but there haven't been any updates for a while now, so I'm not sure on this project's status.