>Why? What's wrong with Make? The list is long, but here's a random sample: - If you have an atomic step that produces multiple targets, it confuses make,

>Why? What's wrong with Make? The list is long, but here's a random sample: - If you have an atomic step that produces multiple targets, it confuses make, and encoding the fact properly in the Makefile is *really* not straightforward. - tabs are indeed a pain - make's DSL (the part that pre-processes the Makefile before feeding it to whatever shell you want) is really ugly. In particular, using '$' in the commands is a disaster coz make will chew on those before passing them to the shell. - Oh yeah, and $ABC is in fact understood as "evaluate variable A" and concatenate with the string "BC". Ugh. - managing "generated" dependencies (.e.g. includes) is a pain, especially if you try to have make manage the generating step - managing dependencies on the actual content of the Makefile itself is a pain (as in: if I change the Makefile, what should be rebuilt?) - Make has no (or rather very little) introspection capabilities and even less self-introspection capabilities. If you want a proof of that fact, try to build a graphviz graph of the dependencies, or better: know what commands will be executed if you change a specific file. - The many warts an bags on the side that make grew over the years (.PHONY anyone?) - Recursive Makefiles are a nightmare and make is simply not equipped to deal with them - etc...