Quasi-tangent: I was once hit by a coworker doing first code review on a new repo with "hmm...I'm not familiar with using Makefiles as a project management tool. So something something [don't remember] we should replace that." It struck me as weird because I don't see `make` as a build tool so much as automating shell script snippets you would/could type at the command line. From that POV I conceptually see Makefiles as like a `bin/` folder full of little scripts, honestly the main advantage for me being every command runs with working dir being where the Makefile is; no need to write a `set -euo pipefail; HERE="$(dirname "$0")"` dingleberry at the top of every hypothetical `bin/` script. And having incremental rebuild is sugar on top when it's possible to write :)
I don't see `make` as a build tool because I believe from experience that is where the road to hell begins. But it is convenient to have `make` call CMake/Cargo/pip/whatever. Plain `make` can build, `make test` can test, `make fmt` can auto-format... Even better if you alias `m` to `make` in your shell.
I don't see `make` as a build tool because I believe from experience that is where the road to hell begins. But it is convenient to have `make` call CMake/Cargo/pip/whatever. Plain `make` can build, `make test` can test, `make fmt` can auto-format... Even better if you alias `m` to `make` in your shell.