With Aubit 4gl compiler, compiling small program can be trivial:

4glpc *.4gl -o myprog
4glpc *.per
amkmessage myhelp.msg myhelp.iem

Even with extra C code, it’s still simple:

4glpc *.4gl myccode.c -o myprog -DAUBIT4GL

But, when you want to keep your make files compatible with Informix and 4Js compilers, have multiple program definitions in one directory, use pre-linked libraries, and be capable of compiling to P-code and C-code for each compiler, take care of installing and cleaning, it’s not that simple any more.