make-first-existing-target command not found

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

make-first-existing-target: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: make-first-existing-target: command not found

Solutions to make-first-existing-target: command not found

How To Fix make-first-existing-target: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu make-first-existing-target is provided by make-guile package.

make-guile is:

GNU Make is a utility which controls the generation of executables and other target files of a program from the program’s source files. It determines automatically which pieces of a large program need to be (re)created, and issues the commands to (re)create them. Make can be used to organize any task in which targets (files) are to be automatically updated based on input files whenever the corresponding input is newer — it is not limited to building computer programs. Indeed, Make is a general purpose dependency solver. This variant has built in guile support

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install make-guile

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install make-guile.

sudo apt -y install make-guile

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install make-guile

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix make-first-existing-target command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.