Are Android and LEDE/OpenWrt big enough?
> 3. Let's be honest, nobody really wants to learn Makefile syntax.
That's probably very subjective, I find JavaScript, C++, PHP or Perl much worse :-)
Anyway, for the past years I'm cheating a lot and using CMake to get complex Makefiles almost for free.
Oh definitely. I actually like Makefile's, but in my experience, more teams have a deep familiarity with some programming language, than with Makefile syntax. I haven't met very many people who have read the GNU make manual, and know all the idiosyncracies around Makefile syntax.
It feels much more like in those IDEs where you just drag all the source files in and you're done.
I even prefer editing visual Studio project files by hand to many makefiles out there..
Doesn't mean that it's not hard. :) And if IIRC google are trying to move android build to blueprint because make is too complicated.
target/linux/ar71xx/image/Makefile: CMDLINE = $$(if $$(BOARDNAME),board=$$(BOARDNAME)) $$(if $$(MTDPARTS),mtdparts=$$(MTDPARTS)) $$(if $$(CONSOLE),console=$$(CONSOLE))
If BOARDNAME is defined, add board=$(BOARDNAME) to the string
If MTDPARTS is defined, add mtdparts=$(MTDPARTS) to the string
If CONSOLE is defined, add console=$(CONSOLE) to the string
You must have seen more complex clauses than that in shell scripts and all sorts of places.