GNU Make Reviews & Product Details

It's one of the best tools in compiling open source software for security hardening and custom configuration. We use it for building large binaries or libraries. It easy to update any source file, and any dependent files are regenerated with minimal effort. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You need to be an advanced or intermediate Linux/Unix user to be able to troubleshoot compilation issues. Installing GNU Make for the first time might be tricky depending on your Linux distribution if it doesn't have the necessary libraries or if you're trying to use a particular GNU Make version and you need to resolve dependencies. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Make and its associated configuration files offer mature build scripting. Newer tools are less confusing and have a gentler learning curve but they don't match the level of support make has. It's been around forever and is thus easy to find support. Make allows powerful build configuration and integrates well into third-party programs such as auto tools and CMake. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Makefiles can get insanely complicated. For large projects, I need to use tools like CMake to handle the generation of Makefiles because of the complexity. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have used CMake, make, and IDE's inbuilt make programs, but nothing has offered a more comprehensive way to make and build my .c and .c++ files as well as GNU Make does. The IDEs are less confusing and seem like they're organized, but they can only offer a limited number of options that barely touch the surface.

With Make I can organize the code myself in a customized directory structure and determine the Make sequence myself. Also, the community of experts on Make is so huge that all you need is a google search for answers to most questions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Make offers a huge level of customization, but it gets really complicated when you combine files of different types under the same project. You may have to resort to using CMake or IDEs for such cases.

Make is years behind on handling large amount of files. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The more generic Makefiles, the better. They can be easily reused and once one has a panoply of files for various circumstances, it is only a matter of copying them to the corresponding directory.

Although primitive, the Makefiles have had a great journey and will continue to have it. And learning a few basic tricks will save you typing a lot with what you can devote to what you really like, which is typing a lot. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In the beginning it is a little complicated to understand its operation but it is possible to find good documentation in the network Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MAKE is the standard for compiling programs. Personally I prefer it for programming embedded systems over more expensive options like uvision as it's flexible, free, and cross platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Going from another complier to Make can be a hassle. Always requires setup to get working. Lack of dedicated support beyond forms makes it hard to troubleshoot at times Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's very easy to write code using this tool. All you need to do is convert your code to makefile and tool will handle pretty much rest. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

conversion step sometime could be troublesome and copying over code does lead security concern. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It allows me to define the building instructions of my software Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is still command-line based. It would be nice to have a graphical Makefile editor. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The fact that you can automate the compilation of your project (the most basic function of make) is a life saver, organising all the dependencies of a project. It can basically solve of your build configuration needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The learning curve might be steep, and the manual, while trustworthy and complete, it's long and maybe not in the best format. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I always works as advertised, and there is a tremendous amount of community knowledge about its characteristics and idiosyncrasies. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Makefiles can get very verbose. In addition debugging both failures to build as well as "over building" can get very hairy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Make is old, granted, but that gives it an unequalled portability. Also, it is more difficult to use than the tools specialized for an ecosystem (e.g., go build for go), but that makes it a great tool for the projects mixing different environments (C++ with Python etc.). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would like it to be able to run in daemon mode and watch the files in a given run, and recompile when I save. I would like not to have to run it each time, it should just read the filesystem notifications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.