3 ms·
Makefiles are extremely powerful. I used to write them myself by hand, for a lot more than program generation. Makefiles can be used to recognize data events, a
by bsenftner 5y ago
Makefiles are extremely powerful. I used to write them myself by hand, for a lot more than program generation. Makefiles can be used to recognize data events, and trigger responses - which I used for years in scientific visualization. In grad school, in the inevitable group projects where people lag and do the work at the last possible minute, I used makefiles to recognize when their contribution landed in the share folder so I could review and incorporate. Makefiles are the IFTTT of the pre-Internet era.
- coldpie 5y agoMakefiles are excellent, but I think they're hampered a bit by their extremely terse syntax (see also: perl). I wonder if a slightly different dialect would help modern users who are used to more verbose languages work with them. Off the top of my head, take this make example: %.o: %.c %.h gcc -o $@ $< mkdir $* cp $@ $* and spell it out a bit more: $MATCH$.o <- $MATCH$.c $MATCH$.h gcc -o $OUT$ $FIRST_DEPEND$ mkdir $MATCH$ cp $OUT$ $MATCH$ Obviously this needs a lot more thought than that, but I think newbies would find the 2nd format much more friendly than the first.
- mrlonglong 5y agoI like it, reduces the need to browse through documentation to find out the exact syntax. Been there, got the t shirt many times.