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 runningwhich 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 tomake
executable is present. Runecho $PATH
to print outPATH
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.