How to run a makefile in Windows?

You can install GNU make with chocolatey, a well-maintained package manager, which will add make to the global path and runs on all CLIs (powershell, git bash, cmd, etc…) saving you a ton of time in both maintenance and initial setup to get make running.

1. Install the chocolatey package manager for Windows
   ^{compatible to Windows 7+ / Windows Server 2003+}

2. Run choco install make

I am not affiliated with choco, but I highly recommend it, so far it has never let me down and I do have a talent for breaking software unintentionally.

If you have Visual Studio, run the Visual Studio Command prompt from the Start menu, change to the directory containing Makefile.win and type this:

nmake -f Makefile.win

You can also use the normal command prompt and run vsvars32.bat (c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools for VS2008). This will set up the environment to run nmake and find the compiler tools.