Something unmentioned so far is when you start getting "advanced" the make scene is much like the shell scene and its fairly easy to write something that only r

Something unmentioned so far is when you start getting "advanced" the make scene is much like the shell scene and its fairly easy to write something that only runs on GNU make or only on BSD make and there is plenty of opportunity for argument about that being a bug or feature etc. So there's that. Make being such a good idea and a popular standard, there's no shortage of people implementing not quite compatible make-like-systems. Another fun tip is make your makefile executable and try the first line like #!/usr/bin/env gmake or whatever seems appropriate. Or perhaps GNU make is installed as "make" on your OS or you use an "alternatives" link farm or whatever. Some people will flip out if you put arguments on that command line, others will pat you on the back and high-five. So there's that "fun".