Make

There is MAKE tool for Small C by J. Hendrix. Good compiler, but toolchain definitly must be enhanced.

The second reason to recreate this utility - absent free MAKE for DOS 16-bit (real mode). DJGPP offers just DPMI-based tools.

This MAKE does not support variables - smallest as possible. MAKE is real small - just 5KB on your hard drive!

Source code 100% wroten in Small C (with Assembler inlines).

Makefile format

Nothing new. This is standart makefile text-file.

target1: [dependency1] [.. dependency2]
       [build_command_1]
       [.. build_command_2]

target2: [dependency2] [.. dependency3]
       [build_command_x]
       [.. build_command_z]

Difference with Make from GNU Toolchain (GNU-Make): GNU-make expect TAB-char before build_command, this make - expect SPACE or TAB (one or more).

By default, MAKE start build first target.

Empty lines between targets - optional and not required. Diffrence between build command and targets - build commands lines starts from spaces (or tabs).

Notes about command execution in MS-DOS.

By default, MAKE start search EXE and COM in current directory and in PATH.

If found - run.

If not found (it should be BAT or built-in command like COPY or DEL) - try execute

 COMMAND.COM /C build_command

Path to COMMAND.COM will be received from COMSPEC env variable

So, if You wrote "cc mycool.c" it could start

 K:\SMALLC20\CC.EXE mycool.c

or

 K:\SMALLC22\CC.EXE mycool.c

depends to directory order in PATH.

How to build

Just type

make

Must be in PATH:

• Small C 2.2
• ASM (Small Assembler)
• VAL (linker)
• UPX (executable file compressor)
• DWHELP

Some of this tools you can download for free from

• My Small-C "museum": https://github.com/DosWorld/smallc
• UPX official site: https://upx.github.io/
• DWHELP https://github.com/DosWorld/dwhelp

Exesize-workaround

By default, VAL-linker put 0xFFFF into max memory field (in exe-header). It is means - DOS will allocate all available memory for programm, when start it. It is bad choice, if you need start execute another child-program. DOS could not got free memory for new process and return "no memory" error (INT 21h, AX=4B00h will return CF and errcode 8).

So, I wrote exesize.exe - patch for MAKE's exe header, to avoid this problem. This patch must be applied to fresh make.exe after linking. Here is no sense apply this patch more then once (second time - it will change nothing).

Restrictions

Max target count - 1024

Max MAKEFILE size - 16KB

License

Public domain (The Unlicense http://unlicense.org)