I've generally had to only do this for more-or-less stand alone webservices, but there's nothing preventing making extra targets for setting up networks. To da

I've generally had to only do this for more-or-less stand alone webservices, but there's nothing preventing making extra targets for setting up networks. To date, I'm still using docker compose for that. I started doing makefiles as a reaction to having a bunch of bash scripts cluttering up my directory. More or less just a collection of useful commands. But as I continue to do this, I find it encourages making consistent build routines/versioning. Also, being able to set up dependencies ( like "run relies on build") can also be helpful. Finally, variable substitution is useful for versioning. I think what makes makefiles great are you can do as much or as little as you want with them. I put an example of a common one in another reply.