nmake.exe keeps complaining about flags I'm not giving it. (U1065)

Question

When I run nmake.exe from make I get this error:

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 8.00.50727.42
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

NMAKE : fatal error U1065: invalid option '-'

But I'm not passing in '-' as an option anyplace.

If I run the same command from outside of make it works correctly.

Answer 1

The problem is that the environment variables MAKE and MAKEFLAGS are set by make. These are confusing nmake.exe.

To fix this, just prefix your call to nmake.exe with env -u MAKE -u MAKEFLAGS

Example:

 some-make-target:
      env -u MAKE -u MAKEFLAGS nmake.exe /a /l

Answer 2

if you use windows, simply go to Enviroment Variables in advance system setting and delete system variables "MAKEFLAGS". It should not confuse Nmake anymore.

Answer 3

Supposing you are on a windows prompt command, and you have a rule like that:

 target:
   cd ... && nmake.exe ...

by

 target:
   cd ... && set MAKEFLAGS= && nmake.exe ...

set FOO: display the value of FOO if exist, (like echo %FOO%)

set FOO=: unset FOO, (i.e. later call to set FOO will display Environment variable FOO not defined)

note: there is no unset command