Can we use NMAKE.EXE as a substitute for GNU Make?

Question

I was curious to see if I can compile this repo, with the Microsoft Program Maintenance Utility (NMAKE.EXE) (location) where I got the U1001 error:

makefile(4) : fatal error U1001: syntax error : illegal character '.' in macro Stop.

so I am wondering if nmake.exe is by any means a substitute for GNU Make?

my questions are:

• Can we have cross-compatible Makefiles by using a subset of shared syntax between the two?
• Can we use some sort of NMake or GNU Make macros to have compatible MakeFiles?
• What are the major syntax differences between NMake and GNU Make?

P.S. It seems that this discussion is very relevant to my question, if not a duplicate.

Answer 1

No, you cannot use nmake as a replacement for GNU make.

If your GNU make makefile is written strictly to POSIX specification and doesn't use any GNU-specific enhancements, then you could use any POSIX-conforming instance of make with that makefile.

However, (a) it's unlikely the makefile is really POSIX-conforming, and (b) nmake (as far as I'm aware) isn't a POSIX-conforming implementation of make anyway.