Re: GNU Make on Windows

[Paul Smith]

Hi Sarah; I've added back the mailing list.  In general I prefer to
always CC the list because it ensures that other people who are looking
for answers might be able to find them in the archive.  Hope that's OK!

On Fri, 2020-07-31 at 12:41 -0600, Sarah Toth wrote:
> Yeah i initially installed it with a binary but then went back; i do
> have visual studio installed as well as the required BuildTools. But
> the instructions for this method aren't clear to me; 
> 
> From the docs:
> "Downloading Make
> Make can be found on the main GNU ftp server: 
> http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/ (via HTTP) and 
> ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/ (via FTP). It can also be found on
> the GNU mirrors; please use a mirror if possible."

This means, _the source code_ for GNU make can be found in those
locations.  They will be provided as tar.gz files so you will need a
way to unpack those files (if you have Git for Windows or similar
installed it will have a tar program that can unpack it).  I guess it
would be nice if we provided the source as a zip file as well.

Once you download the source file and unpack it, you will find a
directory such as "make-4.3".  Inside this directory will be a file
such as README.W32 which will describe how to compile your own version
of GNU make using Visual Studio.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that you shouldn't use pre-built
binaries.  I only suggest that if you do so you will probably need to
request help from whomever is producing those binaries, rather than
from the GNU project.

> I grabbed make-3.81.exe from this server link (
> http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/) - can you clarify that this isn't a
> pre-compiled version? If so how do i compile it via visual studio?

Sorry, but I cannot find any .exe file at that location, so I can't say
anything about the exe you found:

  $ wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-3.81.exe
  2020-07-31 14:49:24 ERROR 404: Not Found.

> The command i'm using is $ eio selfcheck , which is an elevation
> command that checks for the required dependencies.

Sorry but I don't know what "eio" is, or how it involves GNU make.