Re: Cleanup of makefiles 'n stuff

> From: Paul Smith <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:01:02 -0500
> 
> > NMakefile is for building the MS-Windows port with nmake, the
> > Microsoft's make program.  Given that build_w32.bat exists, we could
> > remove it (and the same goes for the make_msvc_* files).
> 
> For the msvc files, my understanding was that someone was developing on
> Windows using MSVC and wanted those files included in the distro to make
> that easier.

These files are needed for building from the MSVC IDE (the Studio),
not from the command prompt.

> For sure once I actually take the plunge and move to a "real" source
> code control system [...]

May I suggest bzr?  It is a GNU project and is used by Emacs, wget,
and a few others on Savannah.

> What I was thinking was this: write a very simple, very generic and
> portable makefile that can build make.  It wouldn't have lots of fancy
> targets like the current SMakefile/NMakefile have, for creating
> distributions etc.  Just the compile and link.

That would be good, yes.

Another thing that is probably needed is a script to run the test
suite.  One of the first things you might want to do after building
Make on a new platform or system configuration is to see whether the
build passes the test suite.