# Setting up GLFW + GLAD + make manually

**URL:** <https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-glfw-glad-make-manually/2139>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [August 24, 2022, 5:43pm UTC](https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-glfw-glad-make-manually/2139 "2022-08-24T17:43:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lift0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@Lift0](https://discourse.glfw.org/u/Lift0)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2022, 5:43pm UTC](https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-glfw-glad-make-manually/2139/1 "2022-08-24T17:43:07Z")

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Hi,

I am about to learn about how I can use make to build for example a complete game or system with lots of files with code.

I remember when glfw was more easy to setup manually. Now I have problems with the documentation on a Linux machine (debian).

How do I setup so that I can run this manually without Cmake?

I want to learn the beauty of make when checking dependencies and so on. Therefore I want to have total control with simple makefiles in the beginning

download glfw, unzip, and place include/GLFW-folder in my 3pp folder  
Generate glad.zip file and place them correctly  
installing libglfw3 and libglfw3 - do I need them when downloading it?  
which flags in makefile should I use?  
-lglad? glad.c? -glfw3

suppose I have a main.cpp with the glfw example code with glad.  
I have a Makefile in same folder

Thanks for debian help with this. Maybe there can be a more straightforward approach on website.

Or am I stupid who doesnt use the cmake approach? It’s so damn big, I totally loose control over that.

Think I got it, realised I can still have an own makefile while using cmake to build glfw for example.

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**Author:** ![dougbinks](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.glfw.org/dougbinks/32/39_2.png) [@dougbinks](https://discourse.glfw.org/u/dougbinks)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2022, 9:35am UTC](https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-glfw-glad-make-manually/2139/2 "2022-08-25T09:35:13Z")

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Hi @Lift0,

Welcome to the GLFW forum.

It looks like you have already solved your problem - building from source with cmake and then using makefiles is certainly a valid approach, though cmake can be fairly simple as per [this GLFW-cmake-starter](https://github.com/juliettef/GLFW-CMake-starter). Using makefiles is certainly slightly harder than using cmake, though GLFW is a relatively simple library so if you are already familiar with creating makefiles then this shouldn’t be difficult. If you haven’t already (I’m guessing you have) take a look at the [documentation on building applications with pkg-config on Unix](https://www.glfw.org/docs/latest/build_guide.html#build_link_pkgconfig) to get started.