- Fix the NEWS file to be accurate

[make.git] / README.W32.template

This version of GNU make has been tested on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003.
It has also been used on Windows 95/98/NT, and on OS/2.

It builds with the MinGW port of GCC (tested with GCC 3.4.2).

It also builds with MSVC 2.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, and 2003 as well as
with .NET 7.x and .NET 2003.

The Windows 32-bit port of GNU make is maintained jointly by various
people.  It was originally made by Rob Tulloh.


Do this first, regardless of the build method you choose:
---------------------------------------------------------

 1. At the Windows command prompt run:

      if not exist NMakefile copy NMakefile.template NMakefile
      if not exist config.h copy config.h.W32 config.h

    Then edit config.h to your liking (especially the few shell-related
    defines near the end, or HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS which corresponds
    to './configure --enable-case-insensitive-file-system').


Using make_msvc_net2003.vcproj
------------------------------

 2. Open make_msvc_net2003.vcproj in MSVS71 or MSVC71 or any compatible IDE,
    then build this project as usual.  There's also a solution file for
    Studio 2003.


Building with (MinGW-)GCC using build_w32.bat
---------------------------------------------

 2. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed (MinGW-)GCC, setup a
    correct PATH and other environment variables for it, then execute ...

        build_w32.bat gcc

    This produces gnumake.exe in the current directory.


Building with (MSVC++-)cl using build_w32.bat or NMakefile
----------------------------------------------------------

 2. Open a W32 command prompt for your installed (MSVC++-)cl, setup a
    correct PATH and other environment variables for it (usually via
    executing vcvars32.bat or vsvars32.bat from the cl-installation,
    e.g. "%VS71COMNTOOLS%vsvars32.bat"; or using a corresponding start
    menue entry from the cl-installation), then execute EITHER ...

        build_w32.bat

    (this produces WinDebug/gnumake.exe and WinRel/gnumake.exe)

    ... OR ...

        nmake /f NMakefile

    (this produces WinDebug/make.exe and WinRel/make.exe).


-------------------
-- Notes/Caveats --
-------------------

GNU make on Windows 32-bit platforms:

        This version of make is ported natively to Windows32 platforms
        (Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP,
        Windows 95, and Windows 98). It does not rely on any 3rd party
        software or add-on packages for building. The only thing
        needed is a Windows compiler.  Two compilers supported
        officially are the MinGW port of GNU GCC, and the various
        versions of the Microsoft C compiler.

        Do not confuse this port of GNU make with other Windows32 projects
        which provide a GNU make binary. These are separate projects
        and are not connected to this port effort.

GNU make and sh.exe:

        This port prefers if you have a working sh.exe somewhere on
        your system. If you don't have sh.exe, the port falls back to
        MSDOS mode for launching programs (via a batch file).  The
        MSDOS mode style execution has not been tested that carefully
        though (The author uses 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 "Cygwin"
        porting effort (http://www.cygwin.com/).
        Other possibilities are the MKS version of sh.exe, or building
        your own with a package like NutCracker (DataFocus) or Portage
        (Consensys).  Also MinGW includes sh (http://mingw.org/).

GNU make and brain-dead shells (BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL):

        Some versions of Bourne shell do not behave well when invoked
        as 'sh -c' from CreateProcess().  The main problem is they seem
        to have a hard time handling quoted strings correctly. This can
        be circumvented by writing commands to be executed to a batch
        file and then executing the command by calling 'sh file'.

        To work around this difficulty, this version of make supports
        a batch mode.  When BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL is defined at compile
        time, make forces all command lines to be executed via script
        files instead of by command line.  In this mode you must have a
        working sh.exe in order to use parallel builds (-j).

        A native Windows32 system with no Bourne shell will also run
        in batch mode.  All command lines will be put into batch files
        and executed via $(COMSPEC) (%COMSPEC%).  However, parallel
        builds ARE supported with Windows shells (cmd.exe and
        command.com).  See the next section about some peculiarities
        of parallel builds on Windows.

Support for parallel builds

        Parallel builds (-jN) are supported in this port, with 2
        limitations:

          - The number of concurrent processes has a hard limit of 64,
            due to the way this port implements waiting for its
            subprocesses;

          - The job server method (available when Make runs on Posix
            platforms) is not supported, which means you must pass an
            explicit -jN switch to sub-Make's in a recursive Makefile.
            If a sub-Make does not receive an explicit -jN switch, it
            will default to -j1, i.e. no parallelism in sub-Make's.

GNU make and Cygnus GNU Windows32 tools:

        Good news! Make now has native support for Cygwin sh. To enable,
        define the HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL in config.h and rebuild make
        from scratch. This version of make tested with B20.1 of Cygwin.
        Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you use HAVE_CYGWIN_SHELL.

GNU make and the MKS shell:

        There is now semi-official support for the MKS shell. To turn this
        support on, define HAVE_MKS_SHELL in the config.h.W32 before you
        build make.  Do not define BATCH_MODE_ONLY_SHELL if you turn
        on HAVE_MKS_SHELL.

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

        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, providing the path
        is not within quotes, e.g. "x:/test/test.c".

        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-%VERSION% (modifications to get test suite to run
        on Windows NT). All tests pass in an environment that includes
        sh.exe.  Tests were performed on both Windows NT and Windows 95.

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 valid on 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. i.e. "x:/long~1/", which is actually
                   "x:\longpathtest".  Type "dir /x" to view these filenames
                   within the cmd.exe shell.
                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.

Pathnames and Case insensitivity:

        Unlike Unix, Windows 95/NT systems are case insensitive but case
        preserving.  For example if you tell the file system to create a
        file named "Target", it will preserve the case.  Subsequent access to
        the file with other case permutations will succeed (i.e. opening a
        file named "target" or "TARGET" will open the file "Target").

        By default, GNU make retains its case sensitivity when comparing
        target names and existing files or directories.  It can be
        configured, however, into a case preserving and case insensitive
        mode by adding a define for HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS to
        config.h.W32.

        For example, the following makefile will create a file named
        Target in the directory subdir which will subsequently be used
        to satisfy the dependency of SUBDIR/DepTarget on SubDir/TARGET.
        Without HAVE_CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS configured, the dependency link
        will not be made:

        subdir/Target:
                touch $@

        SUBDIR/DepTarget: SubDir/TARGET
                cp $^ $@

        Reliance on this behavior also eliminates the ability of GNU make
        to use case in comparison of matching rules.  For example, it is
        not possible to set up a C++ rule using %.C that is different
        than a C rule using %.c.  GNU make will consider these to be the
        same rule and will issue a warning.

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.

FAT:

        Version 3.76 added support for FAT filesystems. Make works
        around some difficulties with stat'ing of files and caching of
        filenames and directories internally.

Bug reports:

        Please submit bugs via the normal bug reporting mechanism which
        is described in the GNU make manual and the base README.
\f
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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This file is part of GNU Make.

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