Thanks for that info - I tried doing exactly as you said and I'd say I'm
almost there, except for the final link step:
When running
.\WinRel\gnumake.exe
(with or without -f Basic.mk, doesn't matter)
it seems that the final executable is attempted to be created in
the exact same file that started the build, leading to the error:
LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'WinRel\gnumake.exe'
I tried taking a quick look at how the output directory is decided,
but it's not so easy because apparently Basic.mk sources other
platform-specific files under the 'mk' folder, mk\Windows32.mk
in this case, and it's not so easy to tell what is happening there
with the OUTDIR variable. The variable that appears to be
honored is
release_msvc_OUTDIR = ./WinRel/
but that seems to be unused in the file (?).
There is even this comment in mk\Windows32.mk that seems
relevant:
# I'm not sure why this builds gnumake rather than make...?
PROG = $(OUTDIR)gnumake$(EXEEXT)
Before I dig deeper into it, am I missing something obvious?
I could try and change the output dir, but afaict this was
supposed to work as-is.