Date:	Tue, 8 Oct 1996 09:10:30 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To:	mschulter AT mach1 DOT mpu DOT com
Cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Learning to use make
In-Reply-To:	<53c0tq$5on@news.mpu.com>
Message-Id:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.961008090356.4486R-100000@is>
Mime-Version:	1.0

On 7 Oct 1996 mschulter AT mach1 DOT mpu DOT com wrote:

> Here's a beginner's question: how much C should I know before trying
> to do for a program like GNUchess what CONFIG.BAT does automatically
> for Emacs 19.31 and higher?

Most of the work is NOT writing the configure batch file; it's porting 
the package to MSDOS.  You *must* know C for this part, else you won't 
know how to change the program so it works on MSDOS.  You must also 
understand what the program does (also quite impossible without working C 
knowledge), and how to express certain things which won't work on MSDOS 
as they do on Unix.

Once you have a source that compiles and runs on MSDOS, it's a fairly 
simple job to either write a Sed script that edits the Makefile so it 
doesn't require a Unixy shell to run, or just prepare a DOS-specific 
Makefile and let configur.bat rename it to Makefile.

Note that I didn't actually look into the sources of GNUChess, so I might 
completely miss the point.  In particular, it may be that GNUChess is 
already ported to MSDOS, in which case the amount of work is minimal.

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