minar@reed.bitnet (Nelson Minar,(???)) (06/07/90)
I received 10 letters in response to my question of good make utilities, as well as several postings onto comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer. Appended is a summary of the mail I got. I must note that in the time I posted this message, PD-MAKE was posted onto one sources group or another. The documentation looks very promising, except for a suspicious looking maintenance list (people 'fixing' the make program - fixes that are necessary for basic functionality). So personally, I'm going to try that - I'm a sucker for free software. mbryan@netcom.uucp: Microsoft's NMAKE. He says its just like Unix, but its part of the compiler package, making it expensive. michaelk@copper.wr.tek.com, toma@tekgvs.labs.tex.com, richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu: NDMAKE by Don Kneller. Shareware predecessor to Opus make, by the same author. Good UNIX compatibility, with an extension for automatic response files. Available on Simtel. jstone@world.std.com: Polymake. Some problems with support. istewart@datlog.co.uk: a hack of a minix make. steve@taumet.com: Turbo C++ 1.0's new make. Removes itself from memory. scjones@sdrc.uu.net: PDMAKE. 'Very compatible with Unix make' (posted on comp.sources.misc) few@quad1.quad.com: an in-house make that swaps to disk. Says he might post the source one day but "don't hold your breath" So if you want to count votes, NDMAKE is the best. I'm going to play with PDMAKE myself, just because I already have it. one thing I hadn't thought about was swapping the actual make program out to disk. Someone kindly pointed out that while a port of GNU make might be nice, it would be REALLY unkind to the 640k an IBM is limited to. So there it is. Thanks for the responses.