The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects • Hacker News Board

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#21

Post by yoz-y » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #15

As a non-programer the only experience I have with makefiles are unpleasant ones of running ./configure then ./make only to go down an endless rabbit hole of missing dependencies. I am very grateful that yum/apt-get, etc. have come such a long way, they grab all your dependencies, you don't have to wait long periods of time for the code to compile. I am sure Make still has it's uses, but I am sure glad package manage…

This is not really a fair comparison though. Makefiles and package managers are orthogonal and the latter has not really replaced the former. Makefiles are like a recipe, package managers are food delivery. Somebody has still to cook the food.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#22

Post by fuball63 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

We use make for standardizing the way docker containers are built, pushed, tested, and run (debug and production modes). I even prefer it to docker-compose at this point, because it is more programmable.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#23

Post by rectang » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. Syntax which relies on bizarre punctuation... If only whoever authored Make 40 years ago had had the design acumen of a Ken Thompson or a Dennis Ritchie!

We're stuck with Make because of network effects. I wish that it could just become "lost" forever and a different dependency-based-programming build tool could replace it... but that's just wishful thinking. The pace of our progress is doomed to be held back by the legacy of those poor design decisions for a long time to come.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#24

Post by drabiega » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #16

bringtheaction wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s useful to distinguish compilation whose target is another language that was originally intended to be human-readable (transpilation) from compilation to a form intended exclusively for machines (compilation to machine code or bytecode).

> I think it’s useful to distinguish How and why? And what do you do of compilers which can do either based simply on the backend you select?

Personally, I think of transpilation as a subset of compilation. So a transpiler is also a compiler, and a compiler that has a readable language backend can do transpilation, which is a type of compilation.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#25

Post by benwaffle » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

I believe $< is only the first dependency and $^ is all of them

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#26

Post by gsaga » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

Anyone here uses makefiles for anything other than compilation and build? One can use it to add some level of concurrency to shell scripts.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#27

Post by rcarmo » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

I use Makefiles extensively for Docker, all sorts of individual projects (it's much easier to "make serve" than remember the specific invocation for getting a dev server up when you use multiple programming languages) and, of late, for Azure infrastructure deployments:

- https://github.com/rcarmo/azure-docker-swarm-cluster/blob/ma...

- https://github.com/rcarmo/azure-acme-foundation/blob/master/...

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#28

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #23

Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. Syntax which relies on bizarre punctuation... If only whoever authored Make 40 years ago had had the design acumen of a Ken Thompson or a Dennis Ritchie! We're stuck with Make because of network effects. I wish that it could just become "lost" forever and a different dependency-based-programming build tool could replace it... but that's just wishful thinking. The pace o…

Make is such a horrifically awful thing to work with that I just end up using a regular scripting language for building. Why learn another language with all its eccentricities and footguns when I already know several others?

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#29

Post by lucian1900 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #23

Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. Syntax which relies on bizarre punctuation... If only whoever authored Make 40 years ago had had the design acumen of a Ken Thompson or a Dennis Ritchie! We're stuck with Make because of network effects. I wish that it could just become "lost" forever and a different dependency-based-programming build tool could replace it... but that's just wishful thinking. The pace o…

It's not like C is famous for having particularly good syntax. If anything, it's the worst thing about it.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#30

Post by juliangoldsmith » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #15

As a non-programer the only experience I have with makefiles are unpleasant ones of running ./configure then ./make only to go down an endless rabbit hole of missing dependencies. I am very grateful that yum/apt-get, etc. have come such a long way, they grab all your dependencies, you don't have to wait long periods of time for the code to compile. I am sure Make still has it's uses, but I am sure glad package manage…

Autotools (the ./configure) is generally a pain to work with. It essentially spits out a massive script and incomprehensible makefile that allows your program to be used by the three people who still run HP-UX or AIX.

Good makefiles are simple, and should Just Work™. The dependencies should (theoretically) be listed in the project documentation, though it often isn't.

Package managers are definitely better for non-developers, though. Build systems generally aren't geared toward regular users, so users will find them confusing.