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I am attempting to follow this tutorial to learn how to use the Cookiecutter folder structure for data science projects. My machine is running Windows 10 and I am using Anaconda.

It seems that the Cookiecutter project structure relies heavily on Makefiles, as does the above tutorial I am trying to follow.

Is there a way to use make on Windows and while using Anaconda?

What I've tried....

The first step is to check my installations. I open Anaconda command prompt and run each of the following.

conda --version
make --version
git --version
cookiecutter --version

When I run make --version I get the following error. 'make' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

When I attept to install make by running conda install -c anaconda make, I get:

PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

  - make

Looking at the Anaconda make documentation here, I see it is not available for Windows.

More searching led me to m2w64-make, with documentation found here.

I open an Anaconda command window and install the package using conda install -c conda-forge m2w64-make. Installation appears to run with no errors.

However when I attempt to run this package, nothing happens.

When I run m2w64-make --version I get:

'm2w64-make' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

When I run make --version I get:

'make' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

This Stack Overflow post appears to be very similar at first, but all of the answers tell the OP to use Chocolatey, and do not give an option for Anaconda.

Graham B
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    Installing software is only the first step in allowing it to be invoked. The second step is adding the directory containing the software to your `PATH` so that the system can find it. You'll have to find out what directory Anaconda installed GNU make into, and ensure that directory is on your `PATH`. – MadScientist Jan 04 '23 at 21:36
  • @MadScientist Thank you for your answer. Anaconda installed it into the same directory it installs all packages: `.\Anaconda3\pkgs\`. I've installed many other packages this way and have never had this problem before. – Graham B Jan 04 '23 at 22:02
  • Note, I'm talking about where it put the actual make program. It will be called something like `m2w64-make.exe` Is that command in that directory? is that directory on your `PATH`? I don't know anything about Anaconda but it seems mostly for installing Python packages; these are not programs like make, so just because it can run installed Python packages doesn't mean it can run stand-alone packages like `make`. – MadScientist Jan 04 '23 at 22:12
  • If the Anaconda install doesn't want to work, I would still try https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/make. For most imaginable makefiles in Anaconda it should make no difference and I found this to work acceptably well, unless you try to do C or C++ development Unix style, where the rough edges and holes start to break down the normal development approach. – Vroomfondel Jan 05 '23 at 10:47

1 Answers1

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Running mingw32-make --version works.

Graham B
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