1.8 KiB
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the idiosyncrasies of make that just avoids?
Make has some behaviors which are either confusing, complicated, or make it unsuitable for use as a general command runner.
One example is that sometimes make won't run the commands in a recipe. For example, if you have a file called test and the the following makefile that runs it:
test:
./test
Make will actually refuse to run it:
$ make test
make: `test' is up to date.
Make see the recipe test and assumes that it produces a file called test. It then sees that this file exists and thus assumes that the recipe doesn't need to be run.
To be fair, this behavior is desirable when using make as a build system, but not when using it as a command runner.
Some other examples include having to understand the difference between = and := assignment, the confusing error messages that can be produced if you mess up your makefile, having to use $$ to write recipes that use environment variables, and incompatibilites between different flavors of make.
What's the relationship between just and cargo build scripts?
Cargo build scripts have a pretty specific use, which is to control how cargo builds your rust project. This might include adding flags to rustc invocations, building an external dependency, or running some kind of codegen step.
just, on the other hand, is for all the other miscellaneous commands you might run as part of development. Things like running tests in different configurations, linting your code, pushing build artifacts to a server, removing temporary files, and the like.
Also, although just is written in rust, it can be used regardless of the language or build system your project uses.