How to fix “make: command not found” error

Are you looking for a solution to fix “make: command not found” error?

“make”, or GNU make, is a program which is used to compile other programs or libraries from source code. Make is frequently preinstalled with the operating system or bundled in a package set such as build-essential on Linux. On MacOS, it comes with the Xcode command line tools set. On Windows, make is not installed by default.

'make' is currently not installed or make: command not found are common error messages, which often pop up in the middle of a program installation. The full error message should look like below.

The program 'make' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt install make
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Command 'make' not found, but can be installed with:
OR
bash: /usr/bin/make: No such file or directory
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

In this short article, we will show you a few ways to fix “make: command not found” error.

Install make

One of the common reasons causing “make: command not found” error is you haven’t got make installed on the system. In order to install make, sequentially run the following commands.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install make

The first command is used to refresh the local package cache, while the second actually install make. Updating the package cache is very important, doing so would let the system be aware of the security updates and latest bug fixes before installing make.

Once the installation is done, you can verify that make has been properly installed by running the following command

make --version

Better alternative: Install build-essential

However, another option, and most likely the solution you seek, is to install the entire development package named build-essential.

build-essential is a metapackage (a package that installs many other packages) which includes all the packages needed to compile a Debian package (including make)

build-essential generally includes the GNU C & C++ compilers and some other utilities for compiling packages from source.

In order to install build-essential, run the following command.

sudo apt install build-essential

Ensure make is in PATH

If you’re sure that make is installed, the next thing in the checklist would be to ensure the path to make executable is present in PATH environment variable.

• First, check whether make executable is present by running which make. You should get back the location of its executable.
• After that, run make using the full path to be really sure that it works properly. In this example, run /usr/bin/make --version.
• Now print out the PATH environment variable and inspect it to ensure the path to make executable is present. Run echo $PATH to print out PATH environment variable. . PATH environment variable consists of paths separated by a colon.

Command not found error messages are common in Linux, it usually indicates the missing of executables in the system. If you’re encountering a “command not found” error message, you may want to check out our other guide like fix zsh: command not found, adb: command not found and apt-get: command not found. If you have any suggestions or spot an error in the article, feel free to leave a comment below to let us know.