> Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. True, one should not edit makefiles with notepad. Proper editors have support for editing them, though. > Sy

> Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. True, one should not edit makefiles with notepad. Proper editors have support for editing them, though. > Syntax which relies on bizarre punctuation... Well documented, though.[1] > a different dependency-based-programming build tool could replace it... but that's just wishful thinking Use prolog[2], you should be able to write this in about 42 lines. But you'll end up with the same complaints ("the syntax, the magic variables!") because, in my experience, those are just superficial: The real problem, imho, is that declarative and rule based programming are simply not part of the curriculum, especially not for auto-didactic web developers. OTOH, it only takes an hour or two to grok it, when somebody "who knows" is around and explains. It really is dead simple. [1] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/make.html#tag_04_84_13_07 http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/mak... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog