> For a more useful comparison, with actual source dependencies and build target: Makefile: GO_FILES = $(shell find . -type f -name '*.go') ./myapp

> For a more useful comparison, with actual source dependencies and build target: Makefile: GO_FILES = $(shell find . -type f -name '*.go') ./myapp: $(GO_FILES) go build -trimpath -o $@ .PHONY: build build: ./myapp Taskfile: tasks: build: cmds: - go build -trimpath -o ./myapp sources: - '\*/*.go' generates: - ./myapp Even in this example, what is PHONY needed for? GO_FILES = $(shell find . -type f -name '*.go') ./myapp: $(GO_FILES) go build -trimpath -o $@ Honestly, it's still simpler to read. > Makefiles are incredibly terse, but that's not an advantage. Brevity is not why I prefer Makefile syntax over YAML, readability is. The minute you start trying to do anything large in a YAML definition you're going to need special editor help to keep track of indentation, and even with that, a large tree is still going to be lost off-screen because the context of any node in the tree depends on seeing the lines immediately above. With Makefiles, any node in the tree has immediate context on the same line (the dependencies) which makes it very readable to me. I really prefer: target: dep1 dep2 dep3 dep4 compared to: tasks: dep3: cmds: - ... sources: - ... generates: - ... dep2: cmds: - ... sources: - ... generates: - ... dep1: cmds: - ... sources: - ... generates: - ... target: cmds: - ... sources: - ... generates: - ...