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Ask HN: Use of Make outside of software build automation?

by lildata on 6/18/21, 1:47 PM with 3 comments

I recently rediscovered the joy & simplicity of make. I also started using it to sort & automate a lot of various daily tasks (adding todos, sending notifications, cleaning files, updates, backups, etc.) Do you also leverage make for those types of use cases? or found better tools to do this?

  • by tacostakohashi on 6/18/21, 2:03 PM

    I've used make a lot over the years for automation of tasks like fetching lots of large remote files and converting between formats (compressing / uncompressing, image file format conversion).

    Any time you have a task with lots of smaller steps that takes several minutes or more to complete from end to end, getting built-in parallelization (-j), error handling, and resuming efficiently from a partially complete state for free with make becomes worthwhile.

  • by PaulHoule on 6/18/21, 1:55 PM

    There is a range of ‘logic programming’ and ‘production rules’ tools such as Prolog, Drools, and Clara that can implement Make-like control flow.

  • by monkeybutton on 6/18/21, 7:35 PM

    I've heard of one instance where a company started down the path of creating a DSL and implementing a rules engine for their task to realizing they could skip all of that work and just use make instead.