Intro + gnu make vs. other makes

[Leeuwesteijn,Joost]

Hi all,

At the moment I'm "making" a build environment using gnu make and I joined
this (and the make-w32) list for some extra support and I'll try to answer
some questions as well. I have always been interested in the different
versions of make and I might even dive into the gnu code one day.

A couple of years ago I have made a build environment (that I was quite
proud of) using Dennis Vadura's (WTI Corp.) dmake (now sort of maintained by
OpenOffice at http://tools.openoffice.org/dmake/). I must say I really liked
its features and its clear syntax. I was wondering why some (1997 old)
features never ended up in gnu make (e.g. '.INCLUDE .NOINFER' to prevent
remaking of makefiles, assignment operators like +:=, specify .PHONY in the
actual rule itself, I believe VPATH was called .SOURCE, path separator
handling, .EXIT target, etc.).

Has anybody ever looked at dmake and the possibility to merge some features
or even the two projects? I guess it has to do with backward compatibility,
and personal taste, and time :-)

I'll put some other questions and things I have in separate posts for easier
discussion and archive searching.

Regards,
Joost Leeuwesteijn