[alwillis]

I went through a phase of using Grunt, Gulp, npm scripts, etc. for web projects.

Recently, after reading this article on make[1], I decided to give it a try and I've been pleasantly surprised with how much easier using make has been vs. some of the FUD I've read about it.

That's not to say there aren't some issues, but that's true of something that's been around since the '70s, including Unix itself.

But that also means it can address almost any situation where files need to be generated and there are dependencies involved, including what I'm doing with generating a static website, compiling and minifying CSS files (or not minifying but including a sourcemap if it's a dev build) and deploying to a production or staging server.

I don't love the syntax but it’s not that bad once you get used to it. Actually, I prefer it to the seemingly endless nesting of JavaScript objects in a Grunt or Gulp configuration file. My next step is to take advantage of Vim’s built-in support for a make-based workflow.

[1]: https://www.olioapps.com/blog/the-lost-art-of-the-makefile/