Personally I use this pattern to make subcommands: main() { if [[ $1 ]]; then cmd_"$@" return fi cmd

Personally I use this pattern to make subcommands: main() { if [[ $1 ]]; then cmd_"$@" return fi cmd_all "$@" } cmd_all() { cmd_something "$@" cmd_some-other-thing } cmd_something() { ... } cmd_some-other-thing() { ... } main "$@" I find it much easier to understand when you execute things in a predictable order and you can have a `set -x` to follow everything through. If it's too slow, then only the show bits should be parallelized. At work, on the other hand, every project uses something like this in the Makefile: -include $(shell 'pwd')/makefile-modules/*/*Makefile* That, and wildcard job names makes it quite difficult to follow the flow when things break.