1This version of GNU make has been tested on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003. 2It has also been used on Windows 95/98/NT, and on OS/2. 3 4It builds natively with MSVC 2.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, and 2003 as well as 5.NET 7.x and .NET 2003. 6 7It builds with the MinGW port of GCC 3.x (tested with GCC 3.4.2). 8 9The Windows 32-bit port of GNU make is maintained jointly by various 10people. It was originally made by Rob Tulloh. 11 12 13Do this first, regardless of the build method you choose: 14--------------------------------------------------------- 15 16 1. At the Windows command prompt run: 17 18 if not exist NMakefile copy NMakefile.template NMakefile 19 if not exist config.h copy config.h.W32 config.h 20 21 Then edit config.h to your liking (especially the few shell-related 22 defines near the end, or HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS which corresponds 23 to './configure --enable-case-insensitive-file-system'). 24 25 26Using make_msvc_net2003.vcproj 27------------------------------ 28 29 2. Open make_msvc_net2003.vcproj in MSVS71 or MSVC71 or any compatible IDE, 30 then build this project as usual. 31 32 33Building with (MinGW-)GCC using build_w32.bat 34--------------------------------------------- 35 36 2. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed (MinGW-)GCC, setup a 37 correct PATH and other environment variables for it, then execute ... 38 39 build_w32.bat gcc 40 41 This produces gnumake.exe in the current directory. 42 43 44Building with (MSVC++-)cl using build_w32.bat or NMakefile 45---------------------------------------------------------- 46 47 2. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed (MSVC++-)cl, setup a 48 correct PATH and other environment variables for it (usually via 49 executing vcvars32.bat or vsvars32.bat from the cl-installation, 50 e.g. "%VS71COMNTOOLS%vsvars32.bat"; or using a corresponding start 51 menue entry from the cl-installation), then execute EITHER ... 52 53 build_w32.bat 54 55 (this produces WinDebug/gnumake.exe and WinRel/gnumake.exe) 56 57 ... OR ... 58 59 nmake /f NMakefile 60 61 (this produces WinDebug/make.exe and WinRel/make.exe). 62 63 64------------------- 65-- Notes/Caveats -- 66------------------- 67 68GNU make on Windows 32-bit platforms: 69 70 This version of make is ported natively to Windows32 platforms 71 (Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, and Windows 98). It 72 does not rely on any 3rd party software or add-on packages for 73 building. The only thing needed is a version of Visual C++, 74 which is the predominant compiler used on Windows32 platforms. 75 76 Do not confuse this port of GNU make with other Windows32 projects 77 which provide a GNU make binary. These are separate projects 78 and are not connected to this port effort. 79 80GNU make and sh.exe: 81 82 This port prefers you have a working sh.exe somewhere on your 83 system. If you don't have sh.exe, the port falls back to 84 MSDOS mode for launching programs (via a batch file). 85 The MSDOS mode style execution has not been tested that 86 carefully though (The author uses GNU bash as sh.exe). 87 88 There are very few true ports of Bourne shell for NT right now. 89 There is a version of GNU bash available from Cygnus "Cygwin" 90 porting effort (http://www.cygwin.com/). 91 Other possibilities are the MKS version of sh.exe, or building 92 your own with a package like NutCracker (DataFocus) or Portage 93 (Consensys). Also MinGW includes sh (http://mingw.org/). 94 95GNU make and brain-dead shells (BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL): 96 97 Some versions of Bourne shell do not behave well when invoked 98 as 'sh -c' from CreateProcess(). The main problem is they seem 99 to have a hard time handling quoted strings correctly. This can 100 be circumvented by writing commands to be executed to a batch 101 file and then executing the command by calling 'sh file'. 102 103 To work around this difficulty, this version of make supports 104 a batch mode. When BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL is defined at compile 105 time, make forces all command lines to be executed via script 106 files instead of by command line. In this mode you must have a 107 working sh.exe in order to use parallel builds (-j). 108 109 A native Windows32 system with no Bourne shell will also run 110 in batch mode. All command lines will be put into batch files 111 and executed via $(COMSPEC) (%COMSPEC%). Note that parallel 112 builds (-j) require a working Bourne shell; they will not work 113 with COM. 114 115GNU make and Cygnus GNU Windows32 tools: 116 117 Good news! Make now has native support for Cygwin sh. To enable, 118 define the HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL in config.h and rebuild make 119 from scratch. This version of make tested with B20.1 of Cygwin. 120 Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you use HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL. 121 122GNU make and the MKS shell: 123 124 There is now semi-official support for the MKS shell. To turn this 125 support on, define HAVE_MKS_SHELL in the config.h.W32 before you 126 build make. Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you turn 127 on HAVE_MKS_SHELL. 128 129GNU make handling of drive letters in pathnames (PATH, vpath, VPATH): 130 131 There is a caveat that should be noted with respect to handling 132 single character pathnames on Windows systems. When colon is 133 used in PATH variables, make tries to be smart about knowing when 134 you are using colon as a separator versus colon as a drive 135 letter. Unfortunately, something as simple as the string 'x:/' 136 could be interpreted 2 ways: (x and /) or (x:/). 137 138 Make chooses to interpret a letter plus colon (e.g. x:/) as a 139 drive letter pathname. If it is necessary to use single 140 character directories in paths (VPATH, vpath, Path, PATH), the 141 user must do one of two things: 142 143 a. Use semicolon as the separator to disambiguate colon. For 144 example use 'x;/' if you want to say 'x' and '/' are 145 separate components. 146 147 b. Qualify the directory name so that there is more than 148 one character in the path(s) used. For example, none 149 of these settings are ambiguous: 150 151 ./x:./y 152 /some/path/x:/some/path/y 153 x:/some/path/x:x:/some/path/y 154 155 Please note that you are free to mix colon and semi-colon in the 156 specification of paths. Make is able to figure out the intended 157 result and convert the paths internally to the format needed 158 when interacting with the operating system, providing the path 159 is not within quotes, e.g. "x:/test/test.c". 160 161 You are encouraged to use colon as the separator character. 162 This should ease the pain of deciding how to handle various path 163 problems which exist between platforms. If colon is used on 164 both Unix and Windows systems, then no ifdef'ing will be 165 necessary in the makefile source. 166 167GNU make test suite: 168 169 I verified all functionality with a slightly modified version 170 of make-test-3.81 (modifications to get test suite to run 171 on Windows NT). All tests pass in an environment that includes 172 sh.exe. Tests were performed on both Windows NT and Windows 95. 173 174Building GNU make on Windows NT and Windows 95/98 with Microsoft Visual C: 175 176 I did not provide a Visual C project file with this port as 177 the project file would not be considered freely distributable 178 (or so I think). It is easy enough to create one, though, if 179 you know how to use Visual C. 180 181 I build the program statically to avoid problems locating DLL's 182 on machines that may not have MSVC runtime installed. If you 183 prefer, you can change make to build with shared libraries by 184 changing /MT to /MD in the NMakefile (or in build_w32.bat). 185 186 The program has not been built for non-Intel architectures (yet). 187 188 I have not tried to build with any other compilers than MSVC. I 189 have heard that this is possible though so don't be afraid to 190 notify me of your successes! 191 192Pathnames and white space: 193 194 Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems encourage pathnames which 195 contain white space (e.g. C:\Program Files\). These sorts of 196 pathnames are legal under Unix too, but are never encouraged. 197 There is at least one place in make (VPATH/vpath handling) where 198 paths containing white space will simply not work. There may be 199 others too. I chose to not try and port make in such a way so 200 that these sorts of paths could be handled. I offer these 201 suggestions as workarounds: 202 203 1. Use 8.3 notation. i.e. "x:/long~1/", which is actually 204 "x:\longpathtest". Type "dir /x" to view these filenames 205 within the cmd.exe shell. 206 2. Rename the directory so it does not contain white space. 207 208 If you are unhappy with this choice, this is free software 209 and you are free to take a crack at making this work. The code 210 in w32/pathstuff.c and vpath.c would be the places to start. 211 212Pathnames and Case insensitivity: 213 214 Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems are case insensitive but case 215 preserving. For example if you tell the file system to create a 216 file named "Target", it will preserve the case. Subsequent access to 217 the file with other case permutations will succeed (i.e. opening a 218 file named "target" or "TARGET" will open the file "Target"). 219 220 By default, GNU make retains its case sensitivity when comparing 221 target names and existing files or directories. It can be 222 configured, however, into a case preserving and case insensitive 223 mode by adding a define for HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS to 224 config.h.W32. 225 226 For example, the following makefile will create a file named 227 Target in the directory subdir which will subsequently be used 228 to satisfy the dependency of SUBDIR/DepTarget on SubDir/TARGET. 229 Without HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS configured, the dependency link 230 will not be made: 231 232 subdir/Target: 233 touch $@ 234 235 SUBDIR/DepTarget: SubDir/TARGET 236 cp $^ $@ 237 238 Reliance on this behavior also eliminates the ability of GNU make 239 to use case in comparison of matching rules. For example, it is 240 not possible to set up a C++ rule using %.C that is different 241 than a C rule using %.c. GNU make will consider these to be the 242 same rule and will issue a warning. 243 244SAMBA/NTFS/VFAT: 245 246 I have not had any success building the debug version of this 247 package using SAMBA as my file server. The reason seems to be 248 related to the way VC++ 4.0 changes the case name of the pdb 249 filename it is passed on the command line. It seems to change 250 the name always to to lower case. I contend that the VC++ 251 compiler should not change the casename of files that are passed 252 as arguments on the command line. I don't think this was a 253 problem in MSVC 2.x, but I know it is a problem in MSVC 4.x. 254 255 The package builds fine on VFAT and NTFS filesystems. 256 257 Most all of the development I have done to date has been using 258 NTFS and long file names. I have not done any considerable work 259 under VFAT. VFAT users may wish to be aware that this port of 260 make does respect case sensitivity. 261 262FAT: 263 264 Version 3.76 added support for FAT filesystems. Make works 265 around some difficulties with stat'ing of files and caching of 266 filenames and directories internally. 267 268Bug reports: 269 270 Please submit bugs via the normal bug reporting mechanism which 271 is described in the GNU make manual and the base README. 272 273------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 274Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2752006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 276This file is part of GNU Make. 277 278GNU Make is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the 279terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 280Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. 281 282GNU Make is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY 283WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR 284A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. 285 286You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with 287GNU Make; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software 288Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. 289