Cross platform make replacement

Question

I am hoping there are some Windows command-line wizards here. If there are, I am forever in your debt.

I have used R (and related tools) on Linux for years. I do everything in emacs if I can. My fingers are just happier that way.

To ensure my analysis is reproducible, I write a makefile for each report / analysis in a project. I use a combination of R and pandoc to produce reports these days. Once my makefile is written, I simply open a shell and enter:

make -f my_target

And my computer runs my analysis. Easy. On Linux.

I have recently started a job with the government and my computer is running Windows and I no longer have make, except through mingw and neither emacs nor gitbash recognize make. I would like to be able to run make (or something equivalent) from both (or either) emacs / gitbash to run my code in a coherent / sane manner.

Thus my question is this. How can I use make, which is currently ONLY accessible through a msys shell and not connected to either gitbash or emacs or what other tool should I move to so I can continue to "build" my reports in a sane / reproducible manner?

If I am better off learning a new tool, that is fine. If there is some way to run mingw's make from emacs / gitbash that is good too. I am open to suggestions. Most of the tutorials on-line are for Windows programmers moving to Linux. There aren't as many resources for us moving from Linux to Windows (which is understandable).

Answer 1

After much swearing and gnashing of teeth, I finally figured out what I did wrong.

I followed the installation instructions for MinGW, but I made a typo when I altered my user's path. Thus, MinGW was NOT in my path.

Following these instructions work, but it isn't smart enough to fix your typographical errors.

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