Question

I have a simple C program (one source file) which I want to compile on Linux and on Windows via make and nmake, respectively. Is there a possibility to accomplish this with a single makefile?

I thought about something like

ifeq($(MAKE), nmake)
    // nmake code here
else
    // make code here
endif

Unfortunately nmake seems not to understand ifeq, so I cannot use that. I have a working makefile, but that produces very ugly results:

hello: hello.c
    $(CC) hello.c

That works on both systems. The problem is that the outcome depends on the default behaviors of the respective compilers. Under Linux I get an executeable named ‘a.out’ rather than ‘hello’. Under Windows I get ‘hello.exe’ but there is also ‘hello.obj’ which I do not want to have.

Is there an alternative way? Or is what I’m trying absolutely impossible?

Answer 1

It’s probably not impossible, but most likely so hard that it would be easier to write two makefiles anyway.

Both GNU make (used in Linux) and nmake have include directives though, so some common things can be put in a common makefile that is included by the main makefile.