I think putting those rules in a standard lib you could include would be awesome. I would then be able to open up the file and see check if it was CPPFLAGS or

I think putting those rules in a standard lib you could include would be awesome. I would then be able to open up the file and see check if it was CPPFLAGS or CXXFLAGS, or whatever, and see how it's written. It'd be way more discover-able, AND it would make make much nicer to teach. I have tried to teach make, but these implicit rules firing when I'm just trying to do a simple example can mask errors and create a lot of confusion. Also, not looking at all the VCS versions of the file makes make run much faster, so being modular in what you imported would be a win for bigger systems too.