office-gobmx/dmake/readme/release.txt

This file is superseded/continued by the toplevel NEWS file.

DMAKE Version 4.1
=================
FINAL FREE RELEASE OF DMAKE, REPLACES VERSION 4.0

Nature: This distribution advances dmake to Version 4.1, patch level 0.
------- This release adds significant functionality and eliminates
        bugs that were introduced with release 4.0.


DETAILS OF ENHANCEMENTS/TWEAKS:
===============================

BUG FIXES:
----------

1. General clean up all over to fix small incompatibilities and obvious
   typos.

2. Fixed bug in getinp.c where buffer was being erroneously overwritten,
   this caused the invalidation of the return address on the stack on
   DOS systems.

3. Fixed a bug that caused the "<target> is up to date" message to be
   suppressed.

4. Fixed a bug involving the value of $@ in conjunction with dynamic
   prerequisites.

5. Relegated the warning associated with duplicate entries in prerequisite
   lists to a non-essential warning.  Added an option flag -Vw to display
   it if you wish to check your makefile for duplicate entries.  Either way
   the parser ignores duplicates.

6. Better default action on checking out RCS targets.  If an RCS target has
   no directory prefix of its own it is checked out into the directory
   which contains the RCS subdirectory, otherwise it ends up in its directory
   qualified location.

7. Improved the speed of lookups in the directory cache; handle mixed case
   file name entries on OS/2 and Win95/NT.

8. Improved prerequisite list generation for long prerequisite lists.

9. Rearanged startup macro files to form an architectural hierarchy.
   This greatly simplifies the maintenance of the startup files.  They
   might even be right at some point in the future.  Please let me know if
   you encounter difficulties, as I don't have access to all possible
   platforms, this sub-hierarchy is bound to have ommisions at this release
   and hence is intended to be evolutionary over time.

10. A build that only touches targets (-t) uses the same algorithm to decide
    valid names as a normal build.

11. Conditional macro assignments fixed, and now work for builtin macro
    variables as well.


NEW FEATURES:
-------------

0. Complete reorganization of Dmake STARTUP scripts.  Please refer to the
   installation notes for details.  THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT!!!

1. Support for long archive member names if Elf is available, plus better
   support for archivers that truncate member names (see comments in
   unix/arlib.c for details).

2. Added variable MAKEVERSION which contains a string indicating the current
   version of dmake.

3. Added the .EXECUTE attribute, see man page for details.

4. Added the .ERRREMOVE attribute, see man page for details.

5. Added support for gmake style if/else/endif, but only if not part of
   a Group recipe.

6. Added initial build target for Coherent version 4.2 UNIX
   and for Windows-NT/Windows-95 32-bit app using Borland C++ 4.0,4.5, 5.0,
   and Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0.

7. MSDOS version now supports two builtin runtime commands, noop, and echo.

8. Added new macro $(uniq list) which returns a sorted version of the
   white space separated tokens in list such that there are no repetitions.

9. Added the function macro $(echo list) which simply returns list.
   This is most useful in conjunction with the new $(foreach ...)
   function macro.

10. Added gmake style function macro

	$(foreach,var,list data)

    where var and list are expanded, and the result is the concatenation of
    expanding data with var being set to each white space separated token in
    list in turn.  For example:

	list = a b c
	all :
		echo [$(foreach,i,$(list) [$i])]

    will output

	[[a] [b] [c]]

    The iterator variable is defined as a local variable to this foreach
    instance.  The following expression illustrates this:

	$(foreach,i,$(foreach,i,$(sort c a b) root/$i) [$i/f.h])

    when evaluated the result is:

	[root/a/f.h] [root/b/f.h] [root/c/f.h]

    The specification of list must be a valid macro expression, such as:

	$($(assign list=a b c))
	$(sort d a b c)
	$(echo a b c)

    and cannot just be the list itself.  That is, the following foreach
    expression:

	$(foreach,i,a b c [$i])

    yields:
	
	"b c [a]"

    when evaluated.

11. Added the macro $(and list).

12. Added the macro $(or list).

13. Added the macro $(not term).

14. Added the .NOINFER attribute to the .INCLUDE directive.  When specified
    any prerequisite of the .INCLUDE directive which cannot be found in
    the .INCLUDEDIRS search list is not automatically made.

15. Improved the handling of internal macros for proper functioning of the *=
    and *:= assignment constructs.  Macros that are internally initially
    defined are considered to be undefined for the purpose of *= and *:=
    assignment until they are the target of an explicit assignment operation.

16. Improved the caching of file names, and their matching on case insensitive
    file systems.  Two control macros help to manage the functionality:

	.DIRCACHE := yes

    Implies that the directory cache will be used.  This is on by default for
    systems that support the reading of directories.  Setting the value of this
    macro to 'no' is equivalent to supplying the '-d' command line switch.

        .DIRCACHERESPCASE := yes

    Causes dmake to respect the case of the directory entries when the cache
    is enabled, thereby treating directory entries in a case sensitive manner.
    Setting this to 'no' disables the matching of case.  This macro has effect
    only if .DIRCACHE := yes.  Otherwise the facilities provided by the native
    OS are used to match file names using 'stat'.

17. Added parameterized user defined function macros.  Yes it's true
    you may now define your own parametized function macros.  Here is
    how it works.  Any macro that is not a predefined function macro and
    is invoked with parameters is looked up as a user defined function
    macro.  A new macro scope is created.  The n'th argument to the
    macro is then assigned to the value of the the macro $n where n is 0
    for the first argument, 1 for the second argument and so on.  The
    argument is expanded before it is assigned.  The original macro is
    then expanded.  For example:

        FOO = a $0 b $1 c $2 d
        echo :; $(FOO x y z)

    Will produce the result string "a z b y c z d".  The
    expansion of $(FOO) on it's own behaves as expected and returns the
    string "a b c d" (assuming that each of $0, $1, $2
    are undefined).   The only restriction when specifying function
    macro arguments is as before:  they cannot contain spaces
    themselves.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
=================
    Thanks to all who submitted code for new features, suggestions for
    improvements, and bug fixes.  I have tried to make sure no gotchas
    remain, if you encounter problems installing or running dmake please
    let me know.  As always, I am always happy to receive e-mail.

    Many have contributed suggestions and bug fixes that make this
    release possible.  The NET thanks you.