RE: Path separator character

[Sauder, Vernon]

Mike wrote:
>This may be stating the obvious, but using GNUish command-line utilities 
>doesn't commit you to using an alternative shell. 

This is the reverse of my environment. I am using GNUish make to drive a
build using WIN32 utilities. (I may also be in the wrong group so direct me
elsewhere if that is the case.) I grabbed the source code here thinking that
it would be easiest to keep up to date if I can build my own. However, if
GNU Make is not suited to my situation, then I either need to significantly
modify it or find a port that does what I want it to. Using DJGPP was an
option but I didn't want to change out all my tools, just make. I am
building 8088 and 8086 embedded firmware so our tools are very specialized.
In the future, we may use Linux as the OS in our embedded systems.

My primary objective for this project was to get the best make for our
development. I was told that Microsoft nmake and opus make were good
choices. I decided to test GNU make. The advantages over nmake and opus are
that (1) it can be used across platforms standardizing the makefile syntax,
and (2) it can be modified if needed. 

So, the questions:
1) Is GNU make the best choice? Sell me.

2) Is there a better port than this? I want a native Win32 binary, no cygwin
or mingw32 dlls. If this port was not really designed for my use, then a
patch to the source would not be useful as others would have no need of it.
Especially if Paul and others do not want Windows geeks hanging around
anyway.

3) If I decide to patch this source, there are further questions as to the
best implementation. It appears that a command line switch or phony target
or such would be needed. I was doing the conversion at all places that used
file names. I am now thinking that the file structure name and hname may be
the best place for this. It should not convert all variables (indeed it does
not know what variables are file names), just the places where it is adding
a file name to a path as part of vpath searching or similar operation. (I am
attempting to minimize my changes if they need to become part of the source
archive.)

BTW, who is the maintainer of the Win32 compatibility code in gmake?

Vernon Sauder