[W32 help] Cannot run MSVC's link

[Alessandro Vesely]

Hi all,
when I try to build a simple program with

   gmake

it always fails. However if I run

   gmake -n > foo.bat
   foo.bat

then it succeeds. How come that? What is it?

I'm using gmake 1.79.1 downloaded from
ftp://ftp.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/mak3791b.zip
on a Win2000 box with MSVC 5 installed.

I can run the compiler (CL.EXE) via gmake, but not the linker (LINK.EXE).
I tried to invoke the linker through CL.EXE with the same result.
I tried setting MAKESHELL to point to a vsh.exe to no avail.
I have no spaces or other funny chars in file or directory names,
the command lines are short enough, not using recursion nor parallel builds, ...

The only difference I can see between gmake- and foo.bat- runs is the
case of some environment variable names, e.g. MSDevDir. I already
noticed that I have to write, say, `$(origin MSDEVDIR)', i.e. all
uppercase, to read a variable from the environment. And if I put a
`set' command in the build rules, I get uppercase variable names.

I'd be quite surprised if case sensitivity were the reason.
I checked MS doc for Win32, it does not say something explicit
about the case for environment variable names. See e.g.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dllproc/base/environment_variables.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dllproc/base/changing_environment_variables.asp

TIA
Ale