Calling Windows commands (e.g. del) from a GNU makefile

Question

It does not appear to be possible to call Windows system commands (e.g. del, move, etc) using GNU Make. I'm trying to create a makefile that doesn't rely on the user having extra tools (e.g. rm.exe from Cygwin) installed.

When the following rule is run, an error is reported del: command not found:

clean:
   del *.o

This is presumably because there is no such execuatable as "del". I've also tried running it as an option to cmd but with this only seems to open a new prompt:

clean:
    cmd /C del *.o

I'm using Windows XP (5.1.2600) with GNU Make 3.79.1 that is bundled as part of MSys.

Answer 1

Are you using Cygwin? Why not call rm?

Answer 2

del is a builtin command of cmd.exe (as well as previously command.com). Your command cmd /C del *.o should work, if it starts a new command prompt I suspect that cmd maybe might be a wrapper. Have you tried to call cmd with its full path (e.g. c:/WINDOWS/system32/cmd.exe)?

Answer 3

It seems the /C switch needs to be escaped because a / is interpreted as a path in GNU Make. The following works as expected:

clean:
    cmd //C del *.o