I use make to run daily/hourly/etc batch processes in the ERP system at work. There's a Python shim to actually run processes in the ERP, plus a shell script t

I use make to run daily/hourly/etc batch processes in the ERP system at work. There's a Python shim to actually run processes in the ERP, plus a shell script to get things ready to run and send success/failure emails, and cron to kick batches off, but other than that it's pure make. In theory I should also be able to pass '-j 4' to make and have it run multiple processes at once, in the correct order with their dependencies properly satisfied, but I haven't actually tried that yet. It's clearly an abuse of a build tool, but it's also a testament to make's incredible flexibility. I've also heard of someone who replaced their Linux startup scripts (in the pre-systemd days) with make to speed up boot time. That's actually what inspired my batch schedule work.