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Comment by stabbles | Hacker News Reader

GNU Make is still being developed. What features are you talking about? IMHO GNU Make is pretty complete, and it shouldn't change drastically.

Also note that ninja exists as an alternative.

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Tracking files based on content hash in addition to timestamps would be a very nice feature Make could add in a compatible way. The current timestamp-only tracking is problematic in many environments, especially with Docker.

Also an easier way to search subdirectories without having to invoke the shell to enumerate those files. A runtime with filewatxhers for hotswap compiling of .o files at runtime. Basically all the stuff msbuild provides

DVC and Dud do this, but they're more meant for data analysis projects than building software.

https://dvc.org/

https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud/

I see teams using Make to execute commands (e.g., transpile this, rename that, etc.), as a replacement (or enhancement) of npm (in the node world), for compiling Golang binaries, and even for running stuff in the pipeline. Make is quite versatile, indeed, but it feels like modern teams are using it in a way Make was never intended to be used. That’s the reason why alternatives to Make have appeared. My take is: wouldn’t it be possible to update Make so that it fits more modern use cases more naturally? The problems with Make alternatives is that: they are many and they don’t come preinstalled with your usual Linux distribution. Make has that special place to be a greater tool than what it is right now.

Make is not a command runner. That people are abusing it as such doesn't mean make needs to change, it means people need to use the right tool for the job. Shell scripts can do the exact same thing without the wonky syntax or attempted dependency resolution, so why not just write a shell script? Hell, even npm has script running functionality. Is that not sufficient?

Yes. Thank you. Make is a victim of its own success in many ways.

> without the wonky syntax

Idk about you but every shell syntax on a unix-like OS is wonky to me

That's fine, you can always use something like Perl or Python then. But at some point, it certainly seems like all people want to do is run shell commands, and a shell script is still the best way to do that.

I think people want a kind of declarative way for the application to pick up their files and build them, often simultaneously

Make is literally a command runner. That’s all it does.

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