make-dfsg/README.W32

Port of GNU make to Windows NT and Windows 95
Builds natively with MSVC 2.x or MSVC 4.x compilers.

To build with nmake on Windows NT or Windows 95:

	1. Make sure cl.exe is in your %Path%. Example:

		set Path=%Path%;c:/msdev/bin

	2. Make sure %include% is set to msvc include directory. Example:

		set include=c:/msdev/include

	3. Make sure %lib% is set to msvc lib directory. Example:

		set lib=c:/msdev/lib

	4. nmake /f NMakefile


There is a bat file (build_w32.bat) for folks who have fear of nmake.

Outputs:

	WinDebug/make.exe
	WinRel/make.exe


-- Notes/Caveats --

GNU make and sh.exe:

	This port prefers you have a working sh.exe somewhere on your
	system. If you don't have sh.exe, port falls back to
	MSDOS mode for launching programs (via a batch file).
	The MSDOS mode style execution has not been tested too
	carefully though (I use GNU bash as sh.exe).

	There are very few true ports of Bourne shell for NT right now.
	There is a version of GNU bash available from Cygnus gnu-win32
	porting effort.	 Other possibilities are to get the MKS version
	of sh.exe or to build your own with a package like
	NutCracker (DataFocus) or Portage (Consensys).

	Tivoli uses a homegrown port of GNU bash which is not (yet)
	freely available. It may be available someday, but I am not in control
	of this decision nor do I influence it. Sorry!

GNU make handling of drive letters in pathnames (PATH, vpath, VPATH):

	There is a caveat that should be noted with respect to handling
	single character pathnames on Windows systems.	When colon is
	used in PATH variables, make tries to be smart about knowing when
	you are using colon as a separator versus colon as a drive
	letter.	 Unfortunately, something as simple as the string 'x:/'
	could be interpreted 2 ways: (x and /) or (x:/).

	Make chooses to interpret a letter plus colon (e.g. x:/) as a
	drive letter pathname.	If it is necessary to use single
	character directories in paths (VPATH, vpath, Path, PATH), the
	user must do one of two things:

	 a. Use semicolon as the separator to disambiguate colon. For
	    example use 'x;/' if you want to say 'x' and '/' are
	    separate components.

	 b. Qualify the directory name so that there is more than
	    one character in the path(s) used. For example, none
	    of these settings are ambiguous:

	      ./x:./y
	      /some/path/x:/some/path/y
	      x:/some/path/x:x:/some/path/y

	These caveats affect Windows systems only (Windows NT and
	Windows 95) and can be ignored for other platforms.

	Please note that you are free to mix colon and semi-colon in the
	specification of paths.	 Make is able to figure out the intended
	result and convert the paths internally to the format needed
	when interacting with the operating system.

	You are encouraged to use colon as the separator character.
	This should ease the pain of deciding how to handle various path
	problems which exist between platforms.	 If colon is used on
	both Unix and Windows systems, then no ifdef'ing will be
	necessary in the makefile source.

GNU make test suite:

	I verified all functionality with a slightly modified version
	of make-test-0.4.5 (modifications to get test suite to run
	on Windows NT). All tests pass in an environment that includes
	sh.exe. Tested on both Windows NT and Windows 95.

Building GNU make on Windows NT and Windows 95 with Microsoft Visual C

	I did not provide a Visual C project file with this port as
	the project file would not be considered freely distributable
	(or so I think). It is easy enough to create one though if
	you know how to use Visual C.

	I build the program statically to avoid problems locating DLL's
	on machines that may not have MSVC runtime installed. If you
	prefer, you can change make to build with shared libraries by
	changing /MT to /MD in the NMakefile (or build_w32.bat).

	Program has not been built under non-Intel architectures (yet).

	I have not tried to build with any other compilers than MSVC.

Pathnames and white space:

	Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems encourage pathnames which
	contain white space (e.g. C:\Program Files\). These sorts of pathnames
	are legal under Unix too, but are never encouraged. There is
	at least one place in make (VPATH/vpath handling) where paths
	containing white space will simply not work. There may be others
	too. I chose to not try and port make in such a way so that
	these sorts of paths could be handled. I offer these suggestions
	as workarounds:

		1. Use 8.3 notation
		2. Rename the directory so it does not contain white space.

	If you are unhappy with this choice, this is free software
	and you are free to take a crack at making this work. The code
	in w32/pathstuff.c and vpath.c would be the places to start.

SAMBA/NTFS/VFAT:

	I have not had any success building the debug version of this
	package using SAMBA as my file server. The reason seems to be
	related to the way VC++ 4.0 changes the case name of the pdb
	filename it is passed on the command line. It seems to change
	the name always to to lower case. I contend that
	the VC++ compiler should not change the casename of files that
	are passed as arguments on the command line. I don't think this
	was a problem in MSVC 2.x, but I know it is a problem in MSVC 4.x.

	The package builds fine on VFAT and NTFS filesystems.

	Most all of the development I have done to date has been using
	NTFS and long file names. I have not done any considerable work
	under VFAT. VFAT users may wish to be aware that this port
	of make does respect case sensitivity.

	Version 3.76 contains some preliminary support for FAT.	 Make
	now tries to work around some difficulties with stat'ing of
	files and caching of filenames and directories internally.
	There is still a known problem with filenames sometimes being
	found to have modification dates in the future which cause make
	to complain about the file and exit (remake.c).

Bug reports:

	Please submit bugs via the normal bug reporting mechanism
	which is described in one of the Texinfo files. If you don't
	have Texinfo for Windows NT or Windows 95, these files are simple
	text files and can be read with a text editor.