The dmake Command

Related Topics:

Specifying a Build Mode	Specifying Build Options
Examining Multiple Build Jobs	The .dmakerc File
Targets	Dmake Jobs Graph Window

The Sun WorkShop^TM programming environment offers the dmake build command, which parses your makefiles, determines which targets can be built concurrently, and distributes the build of those targets over a number of hosts set by you. dmake runs in one of these build modes:

• Serial mode - dmake executes one job at a time on the local host (similar to make).
• Parallel mode - dmake executes multiple jobs concurrently on the local host.
• Distributed mode - dmake executes multiple jobs over several build servers.

In distributed mode, you can concurrently distribute over several servers the process of building large projects consisting of many programs. dmake parses your makefiles, determines which targets can be built concurrently, and distributes the build for those targets over build servers designated by you.

In distributed mode, dmake distributes jobs to the following in the following order:

1. The group specified on the command line as an argument to the -g option

2. The group specified by the DMAKE_GROUP makefile macro

3. The group specified by the DMAKE_GROUP environment variable

4. The first group specified in the runtime configuration file

In contrast, the /usr/ccs/bin/make command builds one target at a time on a local host. It executes lists of shell commands associated with each target to create or update a file of the same name. See the make(1S) man page and dmake(1) man pages for more information.