Re: GNUmake compared with Watcom make

[Michael Mounteney]

<< GNUmake vs. GNUmake. I suppose you intended to say 'wmake', or not? >>

Gah, yes, of course, GNUmake vs. wmake.

<< I try to avoid building over a network, and objects files are *always* 
generated locally. I[t] simply takes too long. >>

I then get trouble with timestamps;  also, I sometimes reboot the Pentium III 
laptop into W'2000 to do a clean build, so the object files have to be on a 
filesystem that's visible to both laptops.

<< I have to assume that the makefile complexity is identical, otherwise these 
numbers mean nothing.  Go hunting for superflous spawn's and shell's, GNUmake 
can be very unforgiving ;-) >>

Surely on a null build, there should be *no* spawning or execing ?  I use one 
monster makefile, not a per-directory hierarchy of makefiles.  It seems to me 
that once make (GNU or w) has loaded, all it has to do is check time stamps.

<< Isn't that also GNUmake? Do a 'make --version'... >>

It is, hence my comment:

> So the weak link appears to be gmake *on Win-32*.

Your other comments about Cygwin noted, but sheer inertia is preventing me 
from making *yet another* change to my build system.  I'm looking instead at 
running all the builds from Linux (note that null builds on this seem to be 
quick) and using the `doit' 
(http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/doit/) utility for compilation 
and linking.  However, as my two laptops are not on the same AEthernet 
segment, they cannot see one another, so I can't do this yet.  This will 
eliminate the use of GNUmake on Win-32.

-- 
______________________________________
Michael Mounteney, technical director.
Landcroft Computing Ltd.