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> Rake, the Ruby version of Make That's a common misconception, but people often don't understand what make is. Contrary to the intuition, make is _not_ a buil
by nathell 7y ago
> Rake, the Ruby version of Make
That's a common misconception, but people often don't understand what make is. Contrary to the intuition, make is _not_ a build system (like, say, cmake), although build systems can be (and often are) implemented on top of make; nor is it a task runner (like rake).
At its core, make is a declarative expert system (with a very sane design and a very quirky rule syntax). Its area of expertise is updating files. I urge every user of make who hasn't read "Recursive Make Considered Harmful"[1] to do so.
[1]: http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf
- ummonk 7y agoYup, and a common modern use case of make is to call in to other language specific build systems.