[jrrrr]

Make is arcane and it gets really gnarly when you use it to describe a large build.

I wouldn't want to use it for its intended use without first looking hard at modern alternatives. (perhaps starting here? https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/wiki/List-of-generators... )

But for solving the problem of "where should we keep our developer command shortcuts?" (which you might answer with "shell scripts" or "a Rakefile"), I've found Make to be pretty great!

[themadsens]

I do exactly the same for maven builds, for exactly the same reasons (Discoverable one-liners, bash autocompletion etc.). Added bonus: facade the XML (yuck) based config language of maven