What to do with the "cmdline macros can't be modified" NMAKE lameness?

[xparq]

The macro-def. precedence rules don't say that "take precedence" doesn't just mean the order they will be initialized, but also that they can only be set where they had been initialized! :-o (Actually, GNU make does it similarly, except they do provide the override keyword to control this!)

So, this will be either able or unable to fixup inputs depending on where their initial (e.g. default) value comes from! :-o

!if "$(out_dir)" == "" || "$(out_dir)" == "\"
!message out_dir is empty, fixing up!...
out_dir = .$(out_dir)
!message out_dir = $(out_dir)
!endif

(E.g. out_dir will always remain empty with nmake out_dir=!...)

---

OK, well, even though capitalizing the cfg. macro names (fortunately, NMAKE, too (like GNU make) is case-sensitive) + the normalizing step from / to \ provides a perfect reconciliation point, bridging the "externs" into "locals", but... it needs to be documented that they are still impossible to set on the command-line, because the recursive NMAKE calls will lose them anyway! :-(

-> Well, added the comment: # Note: the cfg. options can't be set on the NMAKE command line, only here!