Use the same makefile for make (Linux) and nmake (Windows)

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

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this with a single Makefile. The best source for this material is the O'Reilly book:

Managing Projects with GNU Make, Third Edition By Robert Mecklenburg

See chapter 7: Portable Makefiles.

In summary, the technique is to test the environment variable ComSpec which says if the Windows command interpreter is present:

ifdef COMSPEC
  MV ?= move
  RM ?= del
else
  MV ?= mv -f
  RM ?= rm -f
endif

I wrap this with a portable shell script which uses sed to edit the makefile for Nmake or GNU make...