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Its here I look to KISS to guide me. A Makefile is simple and you can expect it to be on most systems, so it's a good place to start stringing things together.

by ghthor 8y ago

Its here I look to KISS to guide me. A Makefile is simple and you can expect it to be on most systems, so it's a good place to start stringing things together. It helps you start building a CLI UI with relative ease, once you know you should mark all ephemeral targets as .PHONY. As a project grows and gains users or requires more system support, the growth of Make usage to declare interdependence should always be discussed. At some point the team will need to start using a different tool, perhaps isolating Makefile usage to bootstrapping the bigger tool. The reason I reach for Make is I know it, and it's rather intuitive for someone to glance at my Makefiles and get an overview of where to look next.

Orphis 8y ago
It is rather intuitive for someone knowing Make. Even then, which version of Make are you talking about? GNUmake? WHICH VERSION again? 3.82? 4.0? Some features in 4.0 aren't backward compatible of course, so you have to be precise about what you are exactly targeting. If you are using anything advanced, then it will become unreadable for beginners too. Try to explain delayed and immediate variable interpolation to beginners, that their "VAR = foo" doesn't always work the way they think it does. On the other hand, yes, the CMake sample above is self explanatory, works on all platforms (more than Make itself), all compilers without having you to write low level compiler invocations, supports IDE for easier debugging (sure, you can also tell your users they have to learn how to use GDB by hand, just... good luck). It will automatically rebuild the right files when their dependencies or command line changes, you don't have to code that by hand for each compiler (and probably have many subtle bugs in your implementation too). Make has a place for simple things, not for build systems, we have way better ways to do them now, even if you refuse to use them.
- ghthor 8y ago
  I'd like to understand where in my comment I stated that I "refused" to use better tools. I even stated that it's important for the team to discuss tooling as a project gains users. Learning new tools is something I enjoy doing, but as my career continues my focus is changed. I haven't once walked into a project where I've felt the need to re-tool the build system because it wasn't living up to the task. And for your information, my company has a monorepo and we build using pants, which I'm starting to grow quite fond of. I may have some bias towards learning new tools, likely why I like go so much. All the tools(now that we have modules and MVS), none of the hassle.
- theamk 8y ago
  I don’t think I ever saw (GNU)make version problems. Most Makefiles I have seen in the wild were using pretty basic features. On the other hand, trying to get Kitware’s stuff to compile was a real horror. I ended up adding Docker to the project just to get the right CMake version. And debugging the buildsystem was hell. I hope I never have to touch CMake again in my life.

by ghthor 8y ago

Orphis 8y ago

It is rather intuitive for someone knowing Make. Even then, which version of Make are you talking about? GNUmake? WHICH VERSION again? 3.82? 4.0? Some features in 4.0 aren't backward compatible of course, so you have to be precise about what you are exactly targeting. If you are using anything advanced, then it will become unreadable for beginners too. Try to explain delayed and immediate variable interpolation to beginners, that their "VAR = foo" doesn't always work the way they think it does. On the other hand, yes, the CMake sample above is self explanatory, works on all platforms (more than Make itself), all compilers without having you to write low level compiler invocations, supports IDE for easier debugging (sure, you can also tell your users they have to learn how to use GDB by hand, just... good luck). It will automatically rebuild the right files when their dependencies or command line changes, you don't have to code that by hand for each compiler (and probably have many subtle bugs in your implementation too). Make has a place for simple things, not for build systems, we have way better ways to do them now, even if you refuse to use them.

ghthor 8y ago
I'd like to understand where in my comment I stated that I "refused" to use better tools. I even stated that it's important for the team to discuss tooling as a project gains users. Learning new tools is something I enjoy doing, but as my career continues my focus is changed. I haven't once walked into a project where I've felt the need to re-tool the build system because it wasn't living up to the task. And for your information, my company has a monorepo and we build using pants, which I'm starting to grow quite fond of. I may have some bias towards learning new tools, likely why I like go so much. All the tools(now that we have modules and MVS), none of the hassle.
theamk 8y ago
I don’t think I ever saw (GNU)make version problems. Most Makefiles I have seen in the wild were using pretty basic features. On the other hand, trying to get Kitware’s stuff to compile was a real horror. I ended up adding Docker to the project just to get the right CMake version. And debugging the buildsystem was hell. I hope I never have to touch CMake again in my life.