From: Eric Backus <ericb AT lsid DOT hp DOT com>
Subject: Re: Need recommendation of good MAKE utility
To: opheys AT kirk DOT fmi DOT uni-passau DOT de
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 92 13:16:36 PST
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.25]
Status: O

> As a relatively unexperienced, new C programmer, I`d like some of you
> to recommend me a good (public domain) MAKE utility.
> As I have seen until now, there must be severe incompatibilities between
> some DOS/UNIX Makefile formats. So is there a make that I can be relatively
> sure of creating executables from UNIX Makefiles with DJGPP?
> I downloaded four or five different MAKE programs via FTP, but they all are
> different in size (10k -- 500k) and functionality (which I can`t really
> decide :-( ).
> So if you have any recommendations, please tell me. And to reduce the amount
> of traffic in this mailing list a little, could you please e-mail your info
> to me? I`ll mail a summary here if you`re interested.
> 
> Thomas Opheys   opheys AT valeska DOT fmi DOT uni-passau DOT de

I use the GNUISH make (it's on SIMTEL20), which is a port of GNU make
to DOS.  It works quite well, and has all the features that I would
look for in a UNIX make utility.  The GNUISH project is separate
from the GNU people, and has worked on porting GNU utilities to DOS.

There is only one drawback.  The GNUISH people decided on their own
convention for getting around the 128-character command-line limit
imposed by DOS.  (Their convention involves using environment
variables named _argc, _argv1, etc.).  Because gcc all other
non-GNUISH programs don't know this convention, you are stuck with
128-character commands in the makefile.  This is only a minor
limitation.

Which brings me to the reason I sent this to the mailing list instead
of just to Thomas.  The GNUISH convention strikes me as being better
than the "response file" method of passing long command lines, since
it involves only memory rather than disk access.  Are there drawbacks
to the GNUISH method that I'm not aware of?  If not, could we get go32
to handle this method in addition to the "response file" method?  I'd
be willing to write the code, but I don't have an C compiler other
than DJGPP, so I can't modify the extender.
--
				Eric Backus
				ericb%hplsla AT hplabs DOT hp DOT com
				(206) 335-2495