perhaps this can help re:nmake:

NMAKE Reference The Microsoft Program Maintenance Utility (NMAKE.EXE) is a command-line tool included with Visual Studio that builds projects based on commands that are contained in a description file. To use NMAKE, you must run it in a Developer Command Prompt window. A Developer Command Prompt window has the environment variables set for the tools, libraries, and include file paths required to build at the command line. For details on how to open a Developer Command Prompt window, see Use the MSVC toolset from the command line.

also read: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/building-on-the-command-line?view=vs-2019