I haven't had that problem, even with big Makefiles. I think the key is to acknowledge that it's a program. Just like any other program, instead of writing som

I haven't had that problem, even with big Makefiles. I think the key is to acknowledge that it's a program. Just like any other program, instead of writing something that looks complicated, write it in a way that's easy to understand later. In particular, no code golf please. Also... just use GNU make, and use its extensions. The POSIX specification is so impoverished that you end up with complicated code (it has no functions for example). There are other tools, but I find make often does the job.