How do you get a Jamfile to use a pre-existing Makefile?
Assuming you where building something like the Gecko engine, would you replace all of the makefiles present in each directory with a Jamfile?
Or, is there a way to get the Jam file to pass all of the build instructions to those makefiles?
Can’t you just use make instead?
Jam and make are not compatible in any way. If you are building jam-based software, use jam. But if you are building make-based software, use make.
If you are doing your own project using jam, and want to include sources from another project, you can’t reuse their buildsystem directly, and you have to rewrite things using jam. But in most cases there isn’t a need for that, you can just compile the library using its own buildsystem, and then use the generated binaries in your project.
Haiku did rewrite buildsystems using jam for several projects, but we stopped doing so because it creates too much maintenance work. This is why compiling Haiku now requires download of several pre-compiled packages.
Thanks for the answer