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Friends don't let friends write recursive makefiles.

It seems like each of the folders with makes files having Makefiles also have a package.json, suggesting they are self-contained packages under the same repository. Still, it seems like a questionable move

Friends don't let friends write Makefiles at all. The author does not appear to be familiar with them, except for the trivial examples in this post.

Every folder gets its own little makefile. Calling those recursive shouldnt result in trouble?

You might like "Recursive Make Considered Harmful", Miller.

http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf

Although I suspect the main complaint (slow, due to checking directories where nothing has changed) has mostly been swept under the rug by increased CPU speeds some of the other items (managing dependencies, ordering, ...) are still worth considering today.

Tup solves this: http://gittup.org/tup/

The types of trivial examples in the post are exactly what you should use makefiles for. make excels at managing simple file transformations: you get into trouble when you try to do complex cross-platform scripting with it.

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