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Make is excellent for tasks where you have a file that needs to exist and steps that reliably cause it to exist. Excellent too for building a tree of things th
by dijit 3y ago
Make is excellent for tasks where you have a file that needs to exist and steps that reliably cause it to exist.
Excellent too for building a tree of things that depend on prior stages; in your example needing java to run a java applet which generates a file.
the syntax takes some getting used to, but in those cases there is little better.
But I do find people using it as a glorified task runner and it works but it’s quite possibly the least ergonomic tool available. - especially for things like making docker images, which I see extremely often
- maccard 3y agoThere's not really any better option though. Once you start setting environment variables, customising tagging, adding file prerequisites, handling building from a different directory (monorepo requiring access to shared resources), you need some sort of wrapper, with options, argparsinc and some rudimentary dependency checking. Make is a super low barrier to entry solution that with a small workaround (phony targets) gives you all of the above.