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make for Nonprogrammers (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet takes
a look at make from a BSD perspective. "This article covers some
make basics so you have an idea what is happening behind the scenes. It
also examines some of the options you have available when issuing make
commands."
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barf bag please Posted Mar 26, 2005 6:35 UTC (Sat) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] The best make is no make. This is a terrible tool whose time past long ago. Its only semi-functional (datestamps) and the makefile syntax is vomit inducing. Its too bad that the good open functional alternatives that are out there cannot get traction.
barf bag please Posted Mar 26, 2005 6:44 UTC (Sat) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] I have to disagree. I think the only part of make's syntax which is truly objectionable is the "beginning tab" requirement. Otherwise, it's pretty simple and usable. And the program itself does the job nicely; the fact that it works on timestamps is a bit limiting, but unfortunately that limitation comes partly from the fact that Unix filesystems do not, so far as I know, support versioning. (Hmmm...idea for a kernel patch?)
I think the prime reason that other (arguably superior) options, such as jam, don't get any traction is that, in order to be worth bothering with, a build utility like make has to be darn near universal; having to download a different tool in order to build a program is enough to dissuade most people from bothering.
critiques of "make" Posted Mar 26, 2005 21:59 UTC (Sat) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] For a critique ofmake by the original author of automake (which tries to work around many of make's problems, see this article by Tom Tromey, not to mention the paper Recursive make considered harmful by Peter Miller.
Unfortunately, the only make replacement currently in widespread use is automake, which is severely constrained by the fact that it has to produce a Makefile as its output (in order that only
critiques of "make" Posted Mar 29, 2005 11:18 UTC (Tue) by Dom2 (guest, #458) [Link] I would say that the most widely used make replacement is probably ant.-Dom
critiques of "make" Posted Mar 31, 2005 4:57 UTC (Thu) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] Thank you very much for the link to the Tom Tromey paper.I've been brewing this for some time, and this is a good reference on both the abstract and the practical issues.
barf bag please Posted Mar 26, 2005 20:21 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The problem with make is that it's "good enough". Where make becomes real problem it's replaced (see ant): java stratup time is so big that ant is often few times faster then make. But the biggest problems with "make raplacements" is s. That is: there are no single good replacement like in case of java->ant. There are dozens of make replacements and this virtually guarantees none will be used!
make for Nonprogrammers (O'ReillyNet) Posted Mar 26, 2005 10:08 UTC (Sat) by shablool (guest, #28774) [Link] SCons is by far a better alternative to make, or to any other build system I know:
SS.
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