[clintonc]

For me, it's a fit-for-purpose issue. Make is great when you're creating artifacts and want to rebuild based on changes. Just is a task runner, so while there's a notion of dependent tasks, there's no notion of dependent artifacts. If you're using a lot of .PHONY targets in a Makefile, you're mostly using it as a task runner -- it works, but it's not ergonomic.

I like that just will search upward for the nearest justfile, and run the command with its directory as the working directory (optional -- https://just.systems/man/en/attributes.html -- with fallback available -- https://just.systems/man/en/fallback-to-parent-justfiles.htm...). For example, I might use something like `just devserver` or `just testfe` to trigger commands, or `just upload` to push some assets -- these commands work from anywhere within the project.

My life wouldn't be that different if I just had to use Make (and I still use Make for some tasks), but I like having a language-agnostic, more ergonomic task runner.

[nrclark]

Just a quick note for interested readers: you don't need to explicitly mark things as .PHONY in make, unless your Makefile lives next to files/folders with the same name as your targets. So unless you had some file called "install" in the same folder, you wouldn't need to have something like ".PHONY: install".

[vbezhenar]

That's the right thing to do, so you should. Relying on implicit condition of specific file missing in current directory is very wrong IMO.

[peterldowns]

As a heavy Just user, I agree with all of this — great answer.