Utmake May 2026

But for new projects? Use CMake, Bazel, or even plain make . Leave utmake to the history books — and the occasional high-stakes archaeology mission. utmake is a reminder that software engineering isn’t always about the new and shiny. Sometimes, it’s about the old and reliable — the tool that held together a pacemaker’s firmware or a Mars rover’s flight software through sheer, boring determinism.

In short: utmake was a . The Syntax (Don’t Be Afraid) A typical utmake control file looks alien if you’re used to modern CMake: utmake

TARGET = firmware.elf SOURCES = main.c utils.c INCLUDES = +../inc +./drivers DEFINES = -DDEBUG=1 -DVXWORKS if ($(ARCH) == "ppc603") CC = ccppc CFLAGS = -mcpu=603 -O2 endif But for new projects

For most developers, make is the standard. cmake is the modern overlord. But utmake ? That sounds like a typo. It’s not. utmake is a reminder that software engineering isn’t