ncibtep@nih.gov

Bioinformatics Training and Education Program

BTEP Question Forum

BTEP maintains several Question and Answer Forums of interest to the NCI/CCR community.
Currently, there are forums on these topics listed below:

If you wish to ask a question go to the Ask Question Page and submit your question.

 Back to Questions

trouble installing makefiles

I used conda install make, but the condo install makefiles does not work. I get this error:
$ conda install Makefiles
Collecting package metadata (current_repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.
Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): done
Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.

PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

- makefiles

Current channels:

- https://conda.anaconda.org/bioconda/osx-64
- https://conda.anaconda.org/bioconda/noarch
- https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/osx-64
- https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/noarch
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/osx-64
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/osx-64
- https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch

To search for alternate channels that may provide the conda package you're
looking for, navigate to

https://anaconda.org

and use the search bar at the top of the page.

(bioinfo)

1

1 Answer:

Using and writing Makefiles is a bit more of an advanced topic which requires some knowledge of programming and is something that won't be covered in great detail at this stage of the course.

To answer your question, Makefiles aren't things that need to be installed, but rather, they are files that you write that contains instructions that tell the computer to do things (think of a Makefile as a collection of commands or scripts contained in a single file).

To "run" the instructions in the Makefile, you would use the make command. make, the utility that interprets Makefiles, should already be installed on your computer, so there is no need to install it.

There are many ways that bioinformaticians keep track of and organize their work/analyses, and Makefiles are one of them.  That said, I use Makefiles for some of the work that I do and find them pretty useful.

Answered on April 15th, 2020 by