Implicit makefile rules can be quite helpful in quickly building a few binaries or small projects.

Take a look at this C++ example: for a file mybin this creates mybin.o and then links it, spitting out a mybin executable:

    env CXXFLAGS="-std=c++14 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic" LDLIBS="-lstdc++" make mybin

To see what's going on, and what kind of file types are supported:

    make --print-data-base | egrep 'COMPILE.cc|LINK.cc'

This not only shows you what is going on, but also what kind of environment variables are involved and can therefore be customized.

For small projects I would create a config.mk (e.g. with CXXFLAGS, CXX, ...) and provide a small Makefile, something along the lines of:

    include config.mk

    all: mybin

    mybin: mybin.o

    watch:
        while ! inotifywait -e modify *.cc; do make; done

    clean:
        $(RM) *.o mybin

    .PHONY: all watch clean

This allows you to easily 1/ add dependencies for binaries and 2/ speed up the development proccess, using the make watch target (note: this does not include header dependencies).

Disclaimer: Makefiles seem to be wonderful build-systems (not dependency managers!) for small projects; but as soon as you find yourself searching for hacks to build into your little Makefile, ditch it and switch to something serious. That's at least my experience.