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Dmitry Kudryavtsev
Dmitry Kudryavtsev

Posted on • Originally published at yieldcode.blog

Why you should adopt Makefile in all of your projects

GNU Make. A software that is, most likely, older than you. It’s so simple, so standard, and so ignored. I’m here to provide a case in favor of make and Makefiles.
What is make and Makefile?

Before I even start to build my case, I need to explain to you what is make and Makefile.

What is make and Makefile?

make - is a build automation tool. It is written in C and was first released in April 1976. On Linux, make is usually available as part of the build tools dependencies that includes stuff like gcc - the C compiler etc. On Ubuntu, it's under build-essentials; on Arch Linux, under base-devel. MacOS users can install it with brew. And on Windows... I honestly have to clue what is going-on on Windows.

But make does not work by itself. It needs instructions. And those instructions are stored in a Makefile.


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