make

[PAAAAAR%CALSTATE.BITNET at cunyvm.cuny.edu]

I have been having a long battle with the 'make' on our 2.9BSD PDP Unix
The documentation is dated August 1978 and most of the files haven't changed
since 1982. The Makefile is full of commands look as if the predate UNIX as
we know it today...

Qn 1.  Can anyone describe the later versions of 'make'

Qn 2.  Has anyone come up with a better way to do it?

Qn 3.  What I need to do is keep between 10 and 20 nrofd'ed files uptodate.
       They are typically named 'week??' and live in a special 'pub' directory
       where my students can print them, brouse thru them, grep words, und so on
       In my $HOME I have directories with the nroff files, I regularly need
       to make changes in two or thrre files and then genrate the printable
       public versions.  Often I archive the 'nroff' files to tape and then
       later reload them and edit again.
       In summary I need a 'makefile' that will 'nroff' new versions of files
       if the input files EXIST and have been changed more recently than the
       published version.
If I had a magic make (hum that's a nice name)
I could say things like this:
/usr/class/week\(??\) : ./week\1
        nroff -ms week\1 >$@; chmod 664 >$@
./week?? :
        # if not present, no problem
In other words with wild cards in targets plus the 'ed'/'sed'
convention for \(...\)  being saved and substituted for \n.
Dick Botting
PAAAAAR at CCS.CSUSCC.CALSTATE(doc-dick)
paaaaar at calstate.bitnet
PAAAAAR%CALSTATE.BITNET@{depends on the phase of the moon}.EDU
Dept Comp Sci., CSUSB, 5500 State Univ Pkway, San Bernardino CA 92407
Disclaimer: I am an only an egg
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