[Tor3]

A Makefile dependency:

  Left : right

Left depends on the right. I don't think the ability to learn that concept is related to programming culture/background. What follows below that is what happens.

  Left : right
         cp right Left
         echo and so on. Left is now updated.

The only tricky part of the above, and something I guess nobody has found any good reason for, is that the whitespace in front of the statements ('cp' in this case) has to be an actual tab, just spaces won't do.

When it comes to the more "advanced" concepts (wildcards etc) there are slight differences between Make versions. And to bother with that is to get into the mindset which created the (argh) Automake and Autoconf systems (to begin with), so back in the day our company simply decided that we'll use GNU Make on every single system (we supported lots of various UNIX systems) and not bother with any of that (no SYSV Make, no BSD Make or anything), because GNU Make was and is available on anything and everything. Made life very simple back then.

[pm215]

The story I have heard about why it must be a tab is that by the time the author of the original Make realised he didn't need to require a tab, he already had six users and didn't want to annoy them by breaking compatibility with the makefiles they'd written :-)

[robinsonb5]

> the (argh) Automake and Autoconf systems

The classic XKCD graph that plots life satisfaction against days-since-editing-xorg.conf could equally apply to days-since-thinking-about-autotools.

In fact one of the few times I've thought about autotools in the last decade was when a failing python-based build script inflicted similar frustration!

If I were forced to find one nice thing to say about autotools it would probably be that at least it doesn't assume an internet connection is always available, reliable and without cost.