M$ Vestigials: nmake and CMD.EXE

I was trying to integrate my Linux PPC build with TFS build and the only way I found this possible was via a "nmake" VS project. This is just contorted: a VS 2010 project wrapping a nmake Makefile is promoted to "build" status.

All this fuss just to map a Samba share, SSH into the Linux build machine and perform the build (the denx cross-compiler we use is only hosted on Linux).

The nmake is a pale and withered imitation of the one true make, the GNU make.

And I am not saying it for lack of trying: nmake does not pick up environment variables correctly and it certainly does not allow me to say

TIMESTAMP = $(shell unixdate '+%%Y-%%m-%%d_%%H.%%M.%%S')

Also it does not follow the respected idiom CC ?= gcc (i.e. Set the CC variable to "gcc" if it wasn't set alteady in this Makefile or the environment.)

This may seem obscure but if one wants to get TFS to get a snapshot onto uniquely named directory onto a Linux samba share then one is out of luck.

Which brings me to the need to have a CMD batch file to handle all this. The backticks implementation in CMD is heinous:

for /F "usebackq" %%a IN \
    (`"unixdate +%%Y-%%m-%%d_%%H.%%M.%%S"`) \
    do @set TIMESTAMP=%%a

Yes, these are the wrong way to do stuff on a Win32 machine but you do what you have to do to get the job done.

-ulianov