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 with the MinGW port of GCC (tested with GCC 3.4.2). 5 6It also builds with MSVC 2.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, and 2003 as well as 7with .NET 7.x and .NET 2003. 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 It was originally made by Rob Tulloh. 11 12 13Do this first, regardless of the build method you choose: 14--------------------------------------------------------- 15 16 1.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. There's also a solution file for 31 Studio 2003. 32 33 34Building with (MinGW-)GCC using build_w32.bat 35--------------------------------------------- 36 37 2. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed (MinGW-)GCC, setup a 38 correct PATH and other environment variables for it, then execute ... 39 40 build_w32.bat gcc 41 42 This produces gnumake.exe in the current directory. 43 44 45Building with (MSVC++-)cl using build_w32.bat or NMakefile 46---------------------------------------------------------- 47 48 2. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed (MSVC++-)cl, setup a 49 correct PATH and other environment variables for it (usually via 50 executing vcvars32.bat or vsvars32.bat from the cl-installation, 51 e.g. "%VS71COMNTOOLS%vsvars32.bat"; or using a corresponding start 52 menue entry from the cl-installation), then execute EITHER ... 53 54 build_w32.bat 55 56 (this produces WinDebug/gnumake.exe and WinRel/gnumake.exe) 57 58 ... OR ... 59 60 nmake /f NMakefile 61 62 (this produces WinDebug/make.exe and WinRel/make.exe). 63 64 65------------------- 66-- Notes/Caveats -- 67------------------- 68 69GNU make on Windows 32-bit platforms: 70 71 This version of make is ported natively to Windows32 platforms 72 (Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, 73 Windows 95, and Windows 98). It does not rely on any 3rd party 74 software or add-on packages for building. The only thing 75 needed is a Windows compiler. Two compilers supported 76 officially are the MinGW port of GNU GCC, and the various 77 versions of the Microsoft C compiler. 78 79 Do not confuse this port of GNU make with other Windows32 projects 80 which provide a GNU make binary. These are separate projects 81 and are not connected to this port effort. 82 83GNU make and sh.exe: 84 85 This port prefers if you have a working sh.exe somewhere on 86 your system. If you don't have sh.exe, the port falls back to 87 MSDOS mode for launching programs (via a batch file). The 88 MSDOS mode style execution has not been tested that carefully 89 though (The author uses GNU bash as sh.exe). 90 91 There are very few true ports of Bourne shell for NT right now. 92 There is a version of GNU bash available from Cygnus "Cygwin" 93 porting effort (http://www.cygwin.com/). 94 Other possibilities are the MKS version of sh.exe, or building 95 your own with a package like NutCracker (DataFocus) or Portage 96 (Consensys). Also MinGW includes sh (http://mingw.org/). 97 98GNU make and brain-dead shells (BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL): 99 100 Some versions of Bourne shell do not behave well when invoked 101 as 'sh -c' from CreateProcess(). The main problem is they seem 102 to have a hard time handling quoted strings correctly. This can 103 be circumvented by writing commands to be executed to a batch 104 file and then executing the command by calling 'sh file'. 105 106 To work around this difficulty, this version of make supports 107 a batch mode. When BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL is defined at compile 108 time, make forces all command lines to be executed via script 109 files instead of by command line. In this mode you must have a 110 working sh.exe in order to use parallel builds (-j). 111 112 A native Windows32 system with no Bourne shell will also run 113 in batch mode. All command lines will be put into batch files 114 and executed via $(COMSPEC) (%COMSPEC%). However, parallel 115 builds ARE supported with Windows shells (cmd.exe and 116 command.com). See the next section about some peculiarities 117 of parallel builds on Windows. 118 119Support for parallel builds 120 121 Parallel builds (-jN) are supported in this port, with 2 122 limitations: 123 124 - The number of concurrent processes has a hard limit of 64, 125 due to the way this port implements waiting for its 126 subprocesses; 127 128 - The job server method (available when Make runs on Posix 129 platforms) is not supported, which means you must pass an 130 explicit -jN switch to sub-Make's in a recursive Makefile. 131 If a sub-Make does not receive an explicit -jN switch, it 132 will default to -j1, i.e. no parallelism in sub-Make's. 133 134GNU make and Cygnus GNU Windows32 tools: 135 136 Good news! Make now has native support for Cygwin sh. To enable, 137 define the HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL in config.h and rebuild make 138 from scratch. This version of make tested with B20.1 of Cygwin. 139 Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you use HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL. 140 141GNU make and the MKS shell: 142 143 There is now semi-official support for the MKS shell. To turn this 144 support on, define HAVE_MKS_SHELL in the config.h.W32 before you 145 build make. Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you turn 146 on HAVE_MKS_SHELL. 147 148GNU make handling of drive letters in pathnames (PATH, vpath, VPATH): 149 150 There is a caveat that should be noted with respect to handling 151 single character pathnames on Windows systems. When colon is 152 used in PATH variables, make tries to be smart about knowing when 153 you are using colon as a separator versus colon as a drive 154 letter. Unfortunately, something as simple as the string 'x:/' 155 could be interpreted 2 ways: (x and /) or (x:/). 156 157 Make chooses to interpret a letter plus colon (e.g. x:/) as a 158 drive letter pathname. If it is necessary to use single 159 character directories in paths (VPATH, vpath, Path, PATH), the 160 user must do one of two things: 161 162 a. Use semicolon as the separator to disambiguate colon. For 163 example use 'x;/' if you want to say 'x' and '/' are 164 separate components. 165 166 b. Qualify the directory name so that there is more than 167 one character in the path(s) used. For example, none 168 of these settings are ambiguous: 169 170 ./x:./y 171 /some/path/x:/some/path/y 172 x:/some/path/x:x:/some/path/y 173 174 Please note that you are free to mix colon and semi-colon in the 175 specification of paths. Make is able to figure out the intended 176 result and convert the paths internally to the format needed 177 when interacting with the operating system, providing the path 178 is not within quotes, e.g. "x:/test/test.c". 179 180 You are encouraged to use colon as the separator character. 181 This should ease the pain of deciding how to handle various path 182 problems which exist between platforms. If colon is used on 183 both Unix and Windows systems, then no ifdef'ing will be 184 necessary in the makefile source. 185 186GNU make test suite: 187 188 I verified all functionality with a slightly modified version 189 of make-test-%VERSION% (modifications to get test suite to run 190 on Windows NT). All tests pass in an environment that includes 191 sh.exe. Tests were performed on both Windows NT and Windows 95. 192 193Pathnames and white space: 194 195 Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems encourage pathnames which 196 contain white space (e.g. C:\Program Files\). These sorts of 197 pathnames are valid on Unix too, but are never encouraged. 198 There is at least one place in make (VPATH/vpath handling) where 199 paths containing white space will simply not work. There may be 200 others too. I chose to not try and port make in such a way so 201 that these sorts of paths could be handled. I offer these 202 suggestions as workarounds: 203 204 1. Use 8.3 notation. i.e. "x:/long~1/", which is actually 205 "x:\longpathtest". Type "dir /x" to view these filenames 206 within the cmd.exe shell. 207 2. Rename the directory so it does not contain white space. 208 209 If you are unhappy with this choice, this is free software 210 and you are free to take a crack at making this work. The code 211 in w32/pathstuff.c and vpath.c would be the places to start. 212 213Pathnames and Case insensitivity: 214 215 Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems are case insensitive but case 216 preserving. For example if you tell the file system to create a 217 file named "Target", it will preserve the case. Subsequent access to 218 the file with other case permutations will succeed (i.e. opening a 219 file named "target" or "TARGET" will open the file "Target"). 220 221 By default, GNU make retains its case sensitivity when comparing 222 target names and existing files or directories. It can be 223 configured, however, into a case preserving and case insensitive 224 mode by adding a define for HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS to 225 config.h.W32. 226 227 For example, the following makefile will create a file named 228 Target in the directory subdir which will subsequently be used 229 to satisfy the dependency of SUBDIR/DepTarget on SubDir/TARGET. 230 Without HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS configured, the dependency link 231 will not be made: 232 233 subdir/Target: 234 touch $@ 235 236 SUBDIR/DepTarget: SubDir/TARGET 237 cp $^ $@ 238 239 Reliance on this behavior also eliminates the ability of GNU make 240 to use case in comparison of matching rules. For example, it is 241 not possible to set up a C++ rule using %.C that is different 242 than a C rule using %.c. GNU make will consider these to be the 243 same rule and will issue a warning. 244 245SAMBA/NTFS/VFAT: 246 247 I have not had any success building the debug version of this 248 package using SAMBA as my file server. The reason seems to be 249 related to the way VC++ 4.0 changes the case name of the pdb 250 filename it is passed on the command line. It seems to change 251 the name always to to lower case. I contend that the VC++ 252 compiler should not change the casename of files that are passed 253 as arguments on the command line. I don't think this was a 254 problem in MSVC 2.x, but I know it is a problem in MSVC 4.x. 255 256 The package builds fine on VFAT and NTFS filesystems. 257 258 Most all of the development I have done to date has been using 259 NTFS and long file names. I have not done any considerable work 260 under VFAT. VFAT users may wish to be aware that this port of 261 make does respect case sensitivity. 262 263FAT: 264 265 Version 3.76 added support for FAT filesystems. Make works 266 around some difficulties with stat'ing of files and caching of 267 filenames and directories internally. 268 269Bug reports: 270 271 Please submit bugs via the normal bug reporting mechanism which 272 is described in the GNU make manual and the base README. 273 274------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 275Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2762006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 277This file is part of GNU Make. 278 279GNU Make is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the 280terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 281Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later 282version. 283 284GNU Make is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY 285WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR 286A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. 287 288You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with 289this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. 290