Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#1

Post by Datenstrom » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

I'm starting a new greenfield personal project which is a great time to try something new. Are there any new Make alternatives that I should try for building a multi-language, monorepo project that also has a number of Linux system dependencies?

For some context the languages will definitely be Python and Julia, with possibly Rust, C/C++, and CUDA. I'll likely be using poetry or conda for managing Python and there are also a good number of system dependencies that will need to be installed on a Linux box.

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#2

Post by muxneo » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

I guess ninja could be a good alternative

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#3

Post by bradwood » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

https://github.com/casey/just

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#4

Post by Datenstrom » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

bradwood wrote: post #3

https://github.com/casey/just

Wow thanks! This is a really cool and looks perfect for my use case.

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#5

Post by yuppie_scum » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

Dockerfile

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#6

Post by bediger4000 » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

Why have all the previous Make alternatives failed to get traction?

I mean, ant, gradle, maven, imake, there's probably others... all have had their moment as the "It Girl" of builds, and then seemed to wither away. What's up with that?

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#7

Post by pid-1 » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

I've been using VSCode + .devcontainer with great success.

I've also tried Nix recently, but couldn't grok it.

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#8

Post by leephillips » Sat, May 28, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

Why do you seek an alternative to Make? It does the job, brilliantly. I’m not a fan of the syntax, however, especially the need for tabs. Is that your main concern?

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#9

Post by rektide » Sat, May 28, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

muxneo wrote: post #2

I guess ninja could be a good alternative

ninja++. Meson is the other one that also seems ragingly popular & well loved.

Re: Ask HN: Any Good Make Alternatives?

#10

Post by Datenstrom » Sat, May 28, 2022, 6:57 PM UTC

pid-1 wrote: post #7

I've been using VSCode + .devcontainer with great success. I've also tried Nix recently, but couldn't grok it.

.devcontainer looks interesting that is a new take, I'm pretty stuck on my heavily modified vim though.

I played around with Nix a lot a few years ago but dropped it when I started needing to do non-trivial things often for packages that weren't available. It was just too much but I love their philosophy. Wish they wouldn't have used a DSL.