> The Microsoft VC++ compiler can definitely be driven by gmake
> (I've done it at previous companies), but that involves a lot
> of platform-specific knowledge added to the makefiles (.obj
> instead of .o, .exe instead of no suffix, etc.).
It also requires major hackery to make all the commandline switches work
the proper way for different files etc. That's where the big difference
is.
> Two downsides: One, is it makes the makefiles ugly, the
> other is that it removes one benefit of native VC++ support:
> The ability to use Visual Studio to build and debug in an
> integrated fashion.
That's also a good point, and one which does make that part more
attractive yet.
Plus - compiling from a .vcproj can be orders of magnitude faster than
from a makefile (even win32 nmake-files) because the compiler is
launched in a much more efficient way)
//Magnus