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Right but writing dependency management (of targets, not package management) in shell seems like a nightmare compared to just leveraging make. Why complicate things? It's dead simple to debug, the interface is dead simple, what's the downside?

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Right, but the original point which started the thread is that "The author is not even using the mtime-based dependency tracking", in which case a plain shell script is very much a viable alternative to make.

I don't particularly mind this use of make, but as an article on make it fails to exemplify what I think is its main purpose.

I don't think that really matters. Sometimes even basic shell scripts are better modeled with a makefile.

In my PS script solution, I just added a clean option+command.

I rewrote my makefile in PS and don't miss anything from make and have no regrets, as it is simpler now.

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