Yang Tse wrote:

>> Yang: I think you should proceed with your nmake tweaks
>
> I respectfully listen your opinion, and in a friendly manner I tell
> you that, for now, I won't follow it.

It's a great pity to hear this.
I hope you'll change your mind and we'll finish this makefile.

> Contrary to what someone has said, Win32 lib/curl already can be built
> out of the box in many ways and with a good bunch of tool chains. And

Above statement, being true, leads to nowhere.
You know current nmake makefile is very poor and that's why you started
to create a better one.
I know this too and that's why I wrote mine.
Everyone as soon as he tries to use current makefile will agree with this.

> Something that is more frequently seen among people wanting to build
> lib/curl with MSVC or for Win32 than those using other compilers or
> platforms, is a lack of knowledge of the tools they are using.

Maybe the knowledge of these two groups is comparable but the quality of
tools they use don't...
How can you know if it's not an inferior building process that creates
problmes for Windows' users?
I'm wondering how many Linux users were just ok to issue well known
three commands and not to think about build process at all.

> And what is worse, the more layers you put between a rooky and his
> compiler, the more knowledge he will need to sort out even the most
> trivial problem.

If it were true then autotools would have never succeeded.
If layers are good enough then 80% of users have no problems and the
rest 20% have tools to solve their problems.

It's a shame (I don't blame anyone) project this popular doesn't even
have descent makefile for Windows.
Portability and building problems are among main causes why other
languages (inferior in many other aspects) have gained so much
popularity over C/C++.
Decent build process should be integral part of every C/C++ project
because it's not integrated in the language.

-- 
Piotr Dobrogost
*** curlpp.org - c++ wrapper for libcurl ***