To:	kunst AT prl DOT philips DOT nl
From:	DAVIDN AT csource DOT oz DOT au (david nugent)
Date:	23 Jan 93 02:27:00
Subject:	Re: Your diffs for PDCURSES
Reply-To:	davidn AT csource DOT oz DOT au
Cc:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Organization:	Unique Computing Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia

 > The makefile supplied with pdcurses is for DMAKE.

It sure is.  The best goddam make for any platform, and especially
msdos. (imho of course :-))  I have used dmake on almost all
platforms that I've worked under for the last couple of years, it it
provides a true 'portable' makefile that no other makefile can
provide.


 > Could you tell me how I could obtain a copy of DMAKE ?

Sure. If you can't find it elsewhere, let me know and I'll be happy
to mail you a copy. If you have ftp access, then any mirror site of
garbo.uasa.fi or simtel-20 will certainly have it.

Here's a section of the README which might help as well:

--<snipt>--
dmake Version 3.8
=================

FULL RELEASE OF DMAKE, REPLACES VERSION 3.8

Nature:  This release is an attempt at addressing all of the little
         obscure bugs and "features" that still remained in dmake and
         often caused spurious or incorrect behaviour.  As such
         there is no major new functionality but several small
         enhancements to make life a little more interesting.

     This distribution advances dmake to Version 3.8, patch level 0.


Availability:
-------------
      dmake is available via anonymous ftp from watmsg.uwaterloo.ca
      (129.97.141.9) as:

  pub/dmake/dmake38.tar.Z           - compressed tar archive
  pub/dmake/dmake38.zoo             - zoo archive
  pub/dmake/dmake38-msdos-exe.zoo   - MSDOS executable zoo archive
  pub/dmake/dmake38-msdos-exe.zip   - MSDOS executable zip archive
  pub/dmake/dmake38.shar01          - xx part shar archive
            ...                       (get all parts)
  pub/dmake/dmake38.sharxx

      and comes in several archive formats.  Choose the one that best
      suits your needs.
--<snipt>--

One minor caution though - I've seen a couple of problems with dmake
reported to the mailing list.  I've never had a problem with any
compiler in any conditions under any OS.  I can't tell you what the
difference is between my success and their failure - only that it
works fine for me in my environment(s).  I've used it on compilers
varying from /bin/cc on Sys V UNIX (SCO, Esix & ISC), gcc under DOS,
OS/2 and UNIX (again SYSV), MicroSoft C 6, C/C++ 7, TC++ 1.0 and
ZTC++.


 > Or do you have a 'standard' makefile to be used with DJGPP (GCC) ?
 > If that is the case, I would like to have this makefile too :-)
 > I use the MS-DOS 'make' which comes with the Borland products.

That has improved over the years and was always better than the MS
nmake and it's (hardly worth mentioning :-)) predecessor, but it has
nowhere near the capability of dmake.  I find it's portability a
major bonus, particularly since I cross-compile code under DOS and
OS/2 using MSC/C++ 7, djgpp, emx and CSet/2, all with the same
makefile.  Using dmake and the initialisatin file for each compiler,
the makefile becomes a simple list of dependancies. Sometimes local
paths are defined in _startup.mk in the current directory, included
by the init file.

I should mention that in comparison with my own makefiles, the
pdcurses makefile is very much a mess. I guess the author wanted to
produce a version independant of dmake's usual initialisation files,
which is the usual place where you'd define rules, recipes and
defines for such things as file extensions, prefixes and so forth. If
you still have problems building with dmake, try "dmake -r".

I also use RCS 5.6 extensively (the latest Novell aware port posted a
couple of months ago to comp.binaries.ibm.pc is excellent and fixed
many share/ipx problems I was having with RCS 4.2, which was the
only relatively stable port I found previously), and dmake works with
it very well.

Sorry, this is probably more information than you requested, but it
many on the mailing list might find it useful.  Hope it helps.

Regards,

  david
david

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