[__MatrixMan__]

I'm not sure why you'd want to generate a Makefile if you're using nix. Unlike make, nix understands the inputs to a build step and won't bother rerunning it unless their inputs have changed. You would lose that you generated a Makefile instead of having nix build whatever it is that the Makefile builds.

Otherwise it does the same things as make: this bunch of commands depends on this other bunch of commands... It just makes you express that as a function so it can be smarter about memoization.

I've not used it for large complex builds, so maybe there's some itch it fails to scratch at finer granularity which I'm overlooking. I liked this artical about where it shines and where it fails to be a build system: https://www.tweag.io/blog/2018-03-15-bazel-nix/. I've been waiting for the problem to arise that encourages me to learn Bazel so I can use it alongside nix, and it just hasn't yet.