[ebingdom]

OP is using Docker + Make in a similar way to how I was a few years ago, before I started using Toast (https://github.com/stepchowfun/toast). Toast lets you define tasks like you would with Make (without all the hairy gotchas of Makefiles), but it runs them inside Docker containers for better portability/reproducibility.

[gnabgib]

I see the benefit of Toast (or Make) if you aren't writing your own container and just want to add a couple of things to an existing container (eg a CI pipeline).. but if you are building a container, including them in the Dockerfile makes more sense, no?

In this particular case it looks like the author is reusing the makefiles used from other builds ("you should also be able to build the compiler from source and run it outside of the container") rather than duplicating the work, and she finds makefiles "to be soothing".