nmake.exe: is there a way to exclude a file from a set of files specified in a macro?

Question

I'm looking for something like the Exclude filter for msbuild, but I Want it in a makefile processed by nmake.

Is that possible?

Suppose I have a makefile that defines this macro:

SOURCES=xxx.c  yyy.c  zzz.c

and I invoke it with nmake OLD=xxx.c NEW=bbb.c

...can I produce, within the makefile, a macro with a value like:

yyy.c zzz.c  bbb.c 

...basically substituting bbb.c for xxx.c ?

The files can appear in any order.

---

This would be pretty easy if the string substitution that is possible in nmake macros, allowed for evaluation of macros.

In other words, I can do

sources=xxx.c yyy.c zzz.c
objs=$(sources:.c=.o)

and the value of $(objs) is

xxx.o yyy.o zzz.o

But nmake does not allow a macro for the value of either argument to that substitution. I cannot do this:

new=.o
sources=xxx.c yyy.c zzz.c
objs=$(sources:.c=$(new))

Answer 1

I didn't find a way to do exactly what I wanted, but i found a workaround.

It involves something called "inline files" which are files that nmake creates dynamically and then uses in the command block. In my case I used the "inline file" trick to create a .cmd file and run it. The .cmd file did the include/exclude logic, and then ran the compiler on the massaged list of source files.

It looks like this.

  CSOURCE=Fribble.c Zambda.c Twoolie.c
         ....
  target :
          <<tmp-build-file.cmd  $(CSOURCE)
      SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
      for %%I in (%*) do if NOT %%I == $(EXC) (
         set filesToBuild=!filesToBuild! %%I
      )
      $(CC) $(INC) !filesToBuild!
      ENDLOCAL
  <<

To invoke that, you can do:

nmake INC=AdditionalFile.c  EXC=Zambda.c  target

...and it does the right thing: Compiles Fribble.c Twoolie.c and AdditionalFile.c, but not Zambda.c .