The tool MMS[Dig93] on VMS is similar to make on UNIX. The functionality is equivalent, but the syntax is a little bit different. It is based on the same idea as make, but is not compatible in its description files. The difference can be seen in Figure 1.2.
Abbildung 1.2: Simple VMS DESCRIP.MMS for MMS
There are two big differences between the MMS DESCRIP.MMS and a make
makefile. First there is an additional space character between the
target and the ``:'' and secondly lists of files are written
differently (separated by commas as opposed to separated by spaces). These
differences cannot be handled by make macros and would require additional
preprocessing. For multiple line macro definitions a `-' is used instead of
the `
' as continuation character. Since for bootstrapping a
common description file would be necessary, two versions of the boot
description files are required to build the preprocessing tool. Other
differences, like different compilation flags and file naming conventions
can be either handled by the preprocessing tool or by using numerous
make macros. Usually a mixture of both strategies is applied.