I've found these things to make Make useful for shell scripting: - straightforward and obvious support for multiple named entry points - by default, process t

I've found these things to make Make useful for shell scripting: - straightforward and obvious support for multiple named entry points - by default, process terminates when a command returns a non-0 exit code - often-adequate (though still crappy, especially for paths with spaces) set of built-in string processing functions - scripts often somewhat portable between Unix-style shells and Windows (I suppose there may be Unix-style shells available for Windows, but I've never found a low-dependency one that actually works. So combined with the first three advantages I've stuck with make.) I've actually found Make much better as a shell script replacement than it is for its stated purpose of building software :)