Lots of "Don't do this" without suggesting alternatives doesn't do anyone much good. If you're on a *nix system, building C/C++ programs (or automating one-off builds like the example), what would you recommend in make's place?
I debated whether to start namedropping build systems, but I decided it was going to be counter productive and devolve into a debate of the relative merits of the systems I'd picked out. In the end it depends heavily on the environment you're in what makes sense for your project.
> use CMake it will make your life easy At the expense of your users. Okay, I know next to nothing about CMake. All I know is that it is extremely frustrating when I get the source to a project that uses CMake and then have to modify the CFLAGS or figure out why it can't find some include file. Of course, the same applies to makefiles generated by automake. Let's just write our makefiles by hand, people.
Thats is the worse idea ever, hand written make files are extremly prone to failure, moreso then CMake files. There is a way to verify that you have all your dependencies and everything is discovered rather then hard coded, but some people really like to hard code things ( CMake and make both let you do this ) The thing CMake gives you is that it will _automatically_ handle almost everything involved with creating co…
"everything is discovered rather than hard coded"
I take it you've never used or read any of the Find.cmake files, or tried to figure out which variables you need to set in all the spaghetti. Is it _LIBRARIES or *_LIBRARY_DIR? Is the comment at the top related to reality? The awful homegrown language makes it all worse.
I've used Make in a similar context: building documents.
Raw simulation results (.log) ->
Processed for plotting (.plot) ->
Ugly Fig files (.x.fig) ->
Pretty Fig files (.fig) ->
EPS files (.eps) ->
The final document (.pdf).
By including the right dependencies in there, you can have individual figures update themselves when the raw data changes, and whole swathes of charts update themselves when the 'fixer' scripts get updated.
If you use GNU Make it's worth using my GNU Make Standard Library: http://gmsl.sourceforge.net/ And also reading everything I wrote as Mr. Make: http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make-arti... Or buy my book: http://www.lulu.com/shop/john-graham-cumming/gnu-make-unleas...
Why does the pdf version cost more than the paperback?
Absolutely do not use make for any new project. If you love make, it's a big, red, burning flag that you're not demanding enough of your tools and that you're not keeping up with changes in your ecosystem. There are many, many way better alternatives to make. Which one is better depends on the platform you're on. The majority of them throws in automatic dependency management for free. Yes, I know that the essence of…
I agree that make's syntax is hard to pick up and often unintuitive, but in my experience, if you reject make, it's a big, red burning flag that you don't fully understand the problems that it solves. The ability to define arbitrary dependencies and actions (including overriding built-in ones) is the defining aspect of a build system. All of the build systems I've used besides "make" (mostly scons, waf, ant, and gyp) have attempted to first-class certain types of dependencies, and the better ones allow you to define some of your own, but they all make assumptions about what one might want to do that make things I do all the time impossible (or at best, way off the beaten path). Examples include post-processing object files before linking, post-processing a binary after linking, or generating object files from something other than the compiler.
I've used Make in a similar context: building documents. Raw simulation results (.log) -> Processed for plotting (.plot) -> Ugly Fig files (.x.fig) -> Pretty Fig files (.fig) -> EPS files (.eps) -> The final document (.pdf). By including the right dependencies in there, you can have individual figures update themselves when the raw data changes, and whole swathes of charts update themselves when the 'fixer' scripts g…
Me too, building a series of HTML/PDF output pages from a docbook source, for example.
Make is a lovely tool that is useful for more than just compiling source code.
Absolutely do not use make for any new project. If you love make, it's a big, red, burning flag that you're not demanding enough of your tools and that you're not keeping up with changes in your ecosystem. There are many, many way better alternatives to make. Which one is better depends on the platform you're on. The majority of them throws in automatic dependency management for free. Yes, I know that the essence of…
> There are many, many way better alternatives to make. Which one is better depends on the platform you're on.
There's your answer: there are many alternatives, but only one make. Ok maybe 2 o 4. :) But a build system should for the most part be platform agnostic. I have such a hard time understanding why so many programming languages seem to need their own Make alternative (Rake, Cake, Fake, ...?)