On some of the platforms to which VistaSource ported, make wasn't even available. VistaSource wanted a build process that supported many developers simultaneously working with a large source tree. Crucial to that choice is the ability for each developer to perform his or her edits in a private directory and still use the public copies of all other sources. Since developers produce objects for multiple platforms and with varying degrees of debug support, based on varying include files, the resulting objects must be kept separate from the sources. In terms of performance, on most machines, amake is able to read its cache and begin checking datestamps for a large project within a few seconds, this is an order of magnitude faster than would be the case with makefiles.
Developers are freed from the drudge of manually entering all include file dependencies.
Amake uses automatic prototype generation. The signatures of all functions in the system are held in a single dictionary. Having said all this, it should be quite possible to build a makefile that can build the product. If demand is sufficient, we would suggest that it be added as an amake feature. Just as amake builds the opensrc.amk file, it could build and opensrc.mak file.