The GNU Make Book | Hacker News Reader

The GNU Make Book

amazon.com

38 pointsjgrahamc18 comments

The ebook is a lot cheaper on the No Starch Press site, and DRM free, so if you're looking the ebook, buy it directly from them.

Just wondering: How does this compare with the GNU Make users manual? Does it cover roughly the same ground or is it more or less deeper?

I've read the manual and I'm currently reviewing the book - the book is a lot more in-depth than the user manual and starts further in (chapter 1 drops you right in with environment variables, there's no introduction to make, what it does, GNU Make vs other build systems etc.).

From the top review:

> The GNU Make Book is intended for people who already have an understanding of GNU Make, what it is, and the basics of how and why someone would use it.

So a whole book about the Make tool, and yet it still requires prior understanding of Make?

Its purpose is deeper understanding not advocacy

I didn't mean that it should advocate, as in try to sell itself. I mean that a book should probably be enough to go from zero to hero (?). Which means that you can just use that book to learn about the tool without first doing any background legwork, like in the scenario that I described in another comment.

a little bit for everybody is a lot for nobody.

Yes, it's important that a whole book on a tool called Make doesn't fall for the easy trap of becoming diluted... :)

Why would you buy a book on something like GNU Make if you didn't already know what it is and how to (kind of) use it?

So that I can learn it. Everyone's gotta start somewhere. Not everyone learns the same way. Some people want a beginning book on a topic.

Lots of those already exist. There also exists a need for getting a deeper understanding of the Make tool and its capabilities, and I'm glad that this is trying to fill that void.

Indeed they do. But I'm answering "Why would you buy a book on something ... if I don't already know what it is?"

I am of the same opinion. It seems that even here, we get the stereotypical answer:

- I've tried to read this book about Make, but it assumes that I know a little bit about Make from before. What's up with that?

- RTFM!

- Hey, I read that I need to learn this "Make" thing in order to <do something else>; you've got any resources on that, man?

- Yeah sure. Just grab that book over there (points).

Except that this book isn’t an introductory book. It’s advanced topics only. This is not, contrary to what the name might imply, the official GNU Make manual. That one can be purchased here: http://shop.fsf.org/product/gnu-make-version-381/ This will also benefit the actual GNU project, unlike other books.

I don't normally complain about what articles get up voted, but this is like 3rd time I see this book on the front page under the time of a month.

Doing a HN search, (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22gnu%20make%22&sort=byDate&p...), it the pattern from jgrahamc look like advertisement when first he submit www, then posting without www a month later, then add a ? the next month.

I disagree. Each of jgrahamc's articles he posted was useful and interesting in its own right, and would well qualify as a quality hacker news post. And if he wants to plug his book on his own blog, I'm OK with that.

However, I do think just posting the Amazon link to the book page on here is little more questionable, and might border on just blatant advertising (Unless jgrahamc has moreto add than just "Buy my book"?).

Memories... i used make a lot back in the "Desktop days"

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