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I would like to have the same Makefile for building on Linux and on Windows. I use the default GNU make on Linux and the mingw32-make (also GNU make ) on Windows.

I want the Makefile to detect whether it operates on Windows or Linux.

For example make clean command on Windows looks like:

clean:
    del $(DESTDIR_TARGET)
But on Linux:
clean:
    rm $(DESTDIR_TARGET)
Also I would like to use different directory separator on Windows (\) and Linux (/).
It is possible to detect Windows operating system in Makefile?
PS: I do not want to emulate Linux on Windows (cygwin etc.)
There is similiar question: OS detecting makefile, but I didn't find the answer here.
                If this is for a substantial project, I wonder if it'd be worth letting autotools handle some of the portability stuff?
– Cascabel
                Oct 30, 2010 at 14:30
                @Jefromi: autotools assumes a basic UNIX toolset (sh, m4, sed, rm, ...).  @tomp: Might as well install them on windows (from MSYS or GnuWin) and spend your efforts on the more challenging portability issues.
– ephemient
                Oct 30, 2010 at 16:07
                @ephemient: Ah, right, my bad. I'm not really a windows person. (But now I'm confused - can't the mingw toolchain provide that too? I know, the OP said no linux emulation.)
– Cascabel
                Oct 30, 2010 at 16:57
Because %OS% is the type of windows, it should be set on all Windows computers but not on Linux.
The blocks then setups up variables for the different programs as well as a function for converting the forward slashes into backslashes.
You to have to use $(call FixPath,path) when you call an outside command (internal commands work fine).  You could also use something like:
/ := /
and then
objs$(/)*
if you like that format better.
                If you're running COMMAND.COM for some reason, you should also be checking for SYSTEMROOT in uppercase: "SystemRoot" won't be defined with that capitalisation (whereas it will in CMD.EXE).
– user458541
                Jan 19, 2016 at 4:24
The SystemRoot trick didn't work for me on Windows XP but this did:
ifeq ($(OS),Windows_NT)
    #Windows stuff
    #Linux stuff
endif
                this might be tricky if you have cygwin installed and make executable comes from cygwin. You will get OS=Windows_NT but you can use Linux commands like mkdir -p. The direction of the directory separator is also important
– sagi
                Mar 30, 2020 at 20:54
Checking WINDIR or COMSPEC is case-sensitive.  Instead, I came up
with the following solution,  hope that helps someone someday:
# detect if running under unix by finding 'rm' in $PATH :
ifeq ($(wildcard $(addsuffix /rm,$(subst :, ,$(PATH)))),)
WINMODE=1
WINMODE=0
endif
ifeq ($(WINMODE),1)
# native windows setup :
UNLINK = del $(subst /,\,$(1))
CAT = type $(subst /,\,$(1))
# cross-compile setup :
UNLINK = $(RM) $(1)
CAT = cat $(1)
endif
        
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