Date: Thu, 9 Jun 1994 8:06:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Chris Tate <FIXER AT FAXCSL DOT DCRT DOT NIH DOT GOV>
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Weird Make/MS C++ problems

This isn't *quite* a fit topic for this list, but since it centers around
the GNU Make distributed with DJGPP, I thought I'd give it a go.  Bear
with me.

I would like *very* much to use GNU Make for developing a particular
Windows application that I'm working on, using Visual C++ (actually
MS C++ 8.0, the command-line version, since obviously Make needs that
sort of compiler).  My main reason is the 'vpath' functionality; I'd
really like to be able to keep sources, headers, and object files all
in different places.

I'm getting very strange behavior from CL (the compiler), though,
when it's invoked from Make.  The directory structure I'm using has
the Makefile at the 'root', and 'INC', 'SRC', and 'OBJ' subdirectories
to hold includes, sources, and object files respectively.

Now, the command to compile a file, putting the object into a particular
directory looks like this:  CL /c /Fo<destination-file-spec> /Tp src/foo.cc
<destination-file-spec> can be something like 'obj\' i.e. make the command
line:  CL /c /Foobj\ /Tp src/foo.cc, which puts the resultant .obj file into
the obj\ subdirectory of whatever the 'current' directory is.  This is
what I want.  (oh, yeah - the 'src/foo.cc' is generated by GNU Make to
properly specify a .cc file in the SRC subdirectory).

Unfortunately, it doesn't work.  From the Makefile, that is.  If I go
to the directory with the Makefile, and type the above CL command (giving
/Foobj\ as the output file option) it works fine.  However, when *the exact
same command* is invoked from GNU Make, it writes the object file to a
bogus file in the same directory as the Makefile, with a name something
like 'foobj.obj'.  If the /Fo option is given a full path, i.e. something
like /Fod:\gmtng\obj\, then the created file is named gmtngobj.obj.

*SOMETHING* is confusing MS C++ 8.0's CL.  My initial suspicion is that
it's either a bug in CL, or some strange interaction involving the way
that GNU Make passes arguments to external programs.  Does anyone have
any notion about what's going on?  I'd like to upgrade to the Visual C++
1.5 release, but I don't have a CD-ROM drive immediately available, so
for the moment that's not an option....

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

-- Chris Tate
   fixer AT faxcsl DOT dcrt DOT nih DOT gov