Re: Help-complete newcomer

[Lennart Borgman]

> On UNIX systems, where Emacs originated, there is a command called 
> 'make'.
> This takes a file containing set of instructions (called a 
> 'makefile'), which
> tells make how to compile your program's source files.
>
> On MS Windows, Visual Studio has a make program, IIRC its called 'nmake'.
> Visual Studio can export a project files as a make file. Cygwin
> ( http://www.cygwin.com/ ) also provides a make program.

Unfortunately nmake behaves a bit differently than unix style make 
programs like GNU Make that comes with Cygwin. If you do not want to 
compile a program created with Visual Studio nmake is probably not what 
you want.

> For example, you can use the compiler directly, such as
> "cl source1.c source2.c -o prog.exe".
> 'cl' is Visual Studio's compiler.

The variable compile-command holds the default command that is shown 
when you run the Emacs compile command.