Make is terribly undervalued as a tool outside of compiling and linking programs.
@jkreeftmeijer I think in #erlang community essen shows that you can (ab-)use #make differently.
But honestly, I just don't see applicability.
@jkreeftmeijer interesting! It's been a while since I had to work on "stateful" projects, there `make` seems to be justified. Like instead of `provisionLocalDatabase.sh` one can have `make data` that will take care of everything like bootstrapping local DB, making users, etc.
The closest similar use-case I am facing daily is to start long-running interactive programs or monitors. Sadly, `make` isn't quite applicable here, since the programs are long-running, so I use `shmux` over shell scripts in `tasks/` subdirectory: https://git.sr.ht/~jonn/shmux/tree/master/item/shmux#L43
In fact, I use #shmux to do non-technical stuff too, like run three windows of #mutt or set up #orgmode windows with reporting.
@jonn Ah, shmux looks cool indeed! Yeah, using make breaks down very fast if the task becomes more complex, like long running tasks or even just accepting arguments. 😅
@jonn My comment was mostly about putting single-line commands in Makefiles instead of running them through Rake or having a directory of executable bash files.
It’s all in one place, and without any extra dependencies to manage.