3 ms·
None of those reasons explain why a Makefile is any better than a scripting language.
by Sean1708 7y ago
None of those reasons explain why a Makefile is any better than a scripting language.
- rat9988 7y agoThank you. I had to reread the comment two times to make sure I didn't miss something. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
- coldtea 7y agoHere's 3 reasons: - Makefiles are a de-facto standard. People know them and those who don't can read how they work in 2000 tutorials. They shouldn't have to read your (and everybody's) custom (and different) script to build a project they've downloaded. - Makefiles are specialised to the tasks of building, running tests, etc. A scripting language is general purpose. As such, it encourages adding all kinds of crap, from overcomplicated steps, to security issues. - Makefile just needs make which is part of the core set for any distro and works fine on Mac and Windows (WSL or elsewhere) as well. Users shouldn't have to install a scripting language (or even a specific version of one) just to build a project.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoMake is better than de facto; POSIX specifies it.