6 ms·

It's a great habit. I use that same concept extensively for all my projects, whatever the language/stack, though I prefer to use Makefiles since I feel like it

It's a great habit. I use that same concept extensively for all my projects, whatever the language/stack, though I prefer to use Makefiles since I feel like it creates a more cohesive result. Very easy to chain, depend and read in the CI too.

dahfizz 6y ago
+1 for make. Its an amazing and underrated tool.
- jscheel 6y ago
  It took me forever to come around on make, but I absolutely love it for things like this now.
  - narwally 6y ago
    Any recommendations on learning to use make more effectively outside of just reading the docs? I feel like this is a glaring gap in my knowledge as I really only know the basics.
    - makapuf 6y ago
      I'd say gnu make (dont use any other make) can be learned from the documentation, it readable. Also, it's super simple to try things yourself (unlike, say, k8s by example) : just use it in your project and use the doc as needed. I am very fond of make, to the point I did a video transcoding solution based on it and ffmpeg.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Related trick: GNU tools tend to come with Info pages - it's to man pages what a book is to a listicle. These Info pages can get you up to speed quickly, while giving you a deeper understanding of the tool at the same time.
    - jscheel 6y ago
      Hmm, unfortunately I don't. I didn't really bookmark anything when I was learning. IIRC, I spent most of my time in the docs though.
    - sneak 6y ago
      Read a lot of other people's Makefiles. I tend to shy away from huge/overly complex ones, but there's a lot of good examples out there where I got most of my ideas/habits/patterns from.
- notacoward 6y ago
  Agreed. A great many things can be expressed as a graph of sub-tasks with preconditions and dependencies that create a partial ordering, and make is pretty darn good at grinding through such graphs. You can go far with just the basics plus a couple of extra tricks like "phony" targets.
necrotic_comp 6y ago
Can you give an example on how you use make for simple things like this ? I want to get into it for non C++ projects, and it's a little daunting to make the leap.
- cgarvis 6y ago
  Here is a starting point for a AWS SAM Golang project. It even comes with a `make help` command. https://gist.github.com/cgarvis/61d70eeb1288bfee540c59cad095be64 https://gist.github.com/cgarvis/61d70eeb1288bfee540c59cad095...
  - necrotic_comp 6y ago
    Thanks!
- sneak 6y ago
  Here's one of mine for a project I'm working on today: https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/mothership/src/branch/master/Makefile https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/mothership/src/branch/master/Makef...
pletnes 6y ago
I love this! Used to do it, too, but currently we’re stuck in windows. What do you do then? (IT blocks WSL so not that)
- JamesSwift 6y ago
  GNU make is available on windows. If you run it via git-bash then it should mostly "just work" (though there will be some idiosyncracies to work out). I tested this project and it all runs on linux/osx/windows: https://github.com/J-Swift/cod-stats https://github.com/J-Swift/cod-stats
  - pletnes 6y ago
    Not an easy sell in my experience, windows people think it’s strange to install an archaic C build system as an add-on. And some people even git in cmd. It’s just not easy to get people on board with it.
    - JamesSwift 6y ago
      When used as I would recommend, GNU Make is not a build system, its a task runner. Its a language agnostic gulp or npm package.json scripts runner. You can run anything you want (even powershell!) in the targets, its just a standard way to package them up together and declare task dependencies.
      - pletnes 6y ago
        I know and support the approach, but have to keep «selling» this. Make documents itself as a C compilation system. I think it’s actually a better task runner! Python’s tox and invoke are nice, but much more noisy and language-specific.
JamesSwift 6y ago
Yes, anything I do public facing is likely to use make/docker. It really cuts down on the mental energy I need to expend thinking about differing environments/bootstrapping.

dahfizz 6y ago

+1 for make. Its an amazing and underrated tool.

jscheel 6y ago
It took me forever to come around on make, but I absolutely love it for things like this now.
- narwally 6y ago
  Any recommendations on learning to use make more effectively outside of just reading the docs? I feel like this is a glaring gap in my knowledge as I really only know the basics.
  - makapuf 6y ago
    I'd say gnu make (dont use any other make) can be learned from the documentation, it readable. Also, it's super simple to try things yourself (unlike, say, k8s by example) : just use it in your project and use the doc as needed. I am very fond of make, to the point I did a video transcoding solution based on it and ffmpeg.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Related trick: GNU tools tend to come with Info pages - it's to man pages what a book is to a listicle. These Info pages can get you up to speed quickly, while giving you a deeper understanding of the tool at the same time.
  - jscheel 6y ago
    Hmm, unfortunately I don't. I didn't really bookmark anything when I was learning. IIRC, I spent most of my time in the docs though.
  - sneak 6y ago
    Read a lot of other people's Makefiles. I tend to shy away from huge/overly complex ones, but there's a lot of good examples out there where I got most of my ideas/habits/patterns from.
notacoward 6y ago
Agreed. A great many things can be expressed as a graph of sub-tasks with preconditions and dependencies that create a partial ordering, and make is pretty darn good at grinding through such graphs. You can go far with just the basics plus a couple of extra tricks like "phony" targets.

necrotic_comp 6y ago

Can you give an example on how you use make for simple things like this ? I want to get into it for non C++ projects, and it's a little daunting to make the leap.

cgarvis 6y ago
Here is a starting point for a AWS SAM Golang project. It even comes with a `make help` command. https://gist.github.com/cgarvis/61d70eeb1288bfee540c59cad095be64 https://gist.github.com/cgarvis/61d70eeb1288bfee540c59cad095...
- necrotic_comp 6y ago
  Thanks!
sneak 6y ago
Here's one of mine for a project I'm working on today: https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/mothership/src/branch/master/Makefile https://git.eeqj.de/sneak/mothership/src/branch/master/Makef...

pletnes 6y ago

I love this! Used to do it, too, but currently we’re stuck in windows. What do you do then? (IT blocks WSL so not that)

JamesSwift 6y ago
GNU make is available on windows. If you run it via git-bash then it should mostly "just work" (though there will be some idiosyncracies to work out). I tested this project and it all runs on linux/osx/windows: https://github.com/J-Swift/cod-stats https://github.com/J-Swift/cod-stats
- pletnes 6y ago
  Not an easy sell in my experience, windows people think it’s strange to install an archaic C build system as an add-on. And some people even git in cmd. It’s just not easy to get people on board with it.
  - JamesSwift 6y ago
    When used as I would recommend, GNU Make is not a build system, its a task runner. Its a language agnostic gulp or npm package.json scripts runner. You can run anything you want (even powershell!) in the targets, its just a standard way to package them up together and declare task dependencies.
    - pletnes 6y ago
      I know and support the approach, but have to keep «selling» this. Make documents itself as a C compilation system. I think it’s actually a better task runner! Python’s tox and invoke are nice, but much more noisy and language-specific.

JamesSwift 6y ago

Yes, anything I do public facing is likely to use make/docker. It really cuts down on the mental energy I need to expend thinking about differing environments/bootstrapping.