make: command not found on Debian and Ubuntu — How to Fix

You’ve downloaded the source code and want to build a program, but the terminal replies:

make: not found

or

-bash: make: command not found

It means just one thing: the make utility isn’t installed. Minimal Debian and Ubuntu installs, VPS images and Docker images don’t include it by default.

Quick fix

Install the make package:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install make

If you’re working as root, you don’t need sudo. The old aptitude install make also works, but aptitude isn’t installed by default on modern systems, while apt is always there.

Better: install build-essential right away

make alone is rarely enough to build anything: the next error will be

gcc: command not found

or cc: not found. So it’s easier to install everything at once — the build-essential package includes make, the gcc and g++ compilers, libc6-dev and dpkg-dev:

sudo apt install build-essential

Check

make --version
gcc --version

If both commands print a version number, you’re ready to build: ./configure, then make and sudo make install.

If the build still fails

• fatal error: xxx.h: No such file or directory or configure: error: ... not found — library headers are missing. You usually need a package ending in -dev, such as libssl-dev or zlib1g-dev.
• cmake: command not found — the project uses CMake: sudo apt install cmake.
• There’s no ./configure file, but there is configure.ac — you need autotools: sudo apt install autoconf automake libtool, then autoreconf -i.
• pkg-config: not found — sudo apt install pkg-config.

On other distributions

In short

The make: not found error is fixed by installing the make package, and to avoid hitting the next errors one by one, install build-essential right away.

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