[erlang-questions] Use of makefiles

[Brian Cully]

On 29-Feb-2008, at 16:17, Joe Armstrong wrote:
> In the lifecyle of a project more times goes into maintenance than in
> the initial coding, at this stage
> makefiles are essential - I know of no realistic alternative.

	This, I think, is the real meat of the argument. There is no  
realistic alternative. I still use make for most of my projects for  
this reason, thorns, burrs, and all.

	That said, there's still a lot of room for improvement.  
Unfortunately, there just doesn't appear to be enough mass behind any  
of the other build tools. Mostly, I think, because none of them do an  
appreciably better job.

	The solution to make is not to make make better, the solution to make  
is to do what it doesn't. ;)

-bjc