Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 12:39:45AM +1000, David wrote:
But then, why use a makefile?
because make is a good tool to use whenever you need to automate creating or updating one or more files that are dependent on other files being created or changed.
it's not just for programming, it's a general purpose tool you can use to define relationships between particular files, or between *types* of files, and have certain actions taken based on changes in files.
Once you're sitting down with a stiff drink, look at http://cyber.com.au/~twb/.bin/twb-get
of course, this kind of automation doesn't require Make. you could do the same things entirely in shell or perl or python or whatever - but you'd have to implement your own method of detecting if any source files had changed or been created, and possibly your own language for defining relationship rules.
Or just not care that you might be doing unnecessary work. :-) There is something to be said for the simplicity of "cc *.c".