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I looked, just now, at all the Make alternatives mentioned: Task, Mage and Just.

Those first two are nowhere near as easy to read as Makefiles. The last one, Just, looks good, though.

At least Cmake files are easy to read, but many of these alternatives are just poor UI, compared to Makefiles. I mean, using YAML of all things and thinking it's some sort of improvement over Make syntax?

1. Mage is just insane. In what world is this:

    func Build() error {
        if err := sh.Run("go", "mod", "download"); err != nil {
            return err
        }
        return sh.Run("go", "install", "./...")
    }
More readable than this:

    build:
        go mod download
        go install ./...
2. Task - not just significant whitespace, but significant whitespace everywhere, due to a poor format (YAML). Look at the example given:

   version: '3'

   tasks:
     build:
       deps: [assets]
       cmds:
         - go build -v -i main.go

     assets:
       cmds:
         - esbuild --bundle --minify css/index.css > public/bundle.css
Compare with Makefile that does exactly the same thing:

    build: assets
        go build -v -i main.go

    assets:
        esbuild --bundle --minify css/index.css > public/bundle.css
These alternatives to "Make an easier Make" appear to not know about Make in the first place.


> due to a poor format (YAML).

That's just your opinion. I'll take YAML whitespaces over Makefile whitespaces any day.

> Compare with Makefile that does exactly the same thing

Good example in favor of Task, I prefer the explicitness :) Especially when the file starts to get big. You forgot the .PHONY by the way, I hope for you there's no build/ or assets/ folder where your Makefile is.

For a more useful comparison, with actual source dependencies and build target:

Makefile:

    GO_FILES = $(shell find . -type f -name '*.go')

    ./myapp: $(GO_FILES)
        go build -trimpath -o $@

    .PHONY: build
    build: ./myapp
Taskfile:

    tasks:
      build:
        cmds:
          - go build -trimpath -o ./myapp
        sources:
          - '**/*.go'
        generates:
          - ./myapp
Makefiles are incredibly terse, but that's not an advantage. I read my code more than I write it, so I favor explicitness .


> For a more useful comparison, with actual source dependencies and build target:

Makefile:

     GO_FILES = $(shell find . -type f -name '*.go')

     ./myapp: $(GO_FILES)
         go build -trimpath -o $@

     .PHONY: build
     build: ./myapp

 Taskfile:

     tasks:
       build:
         cmds:
           - go build -trimpath -o ./myapp
         sources:
           - '\*/*.go'
         generates:
           - ./myapp
Even in this example, what is PHONY needed for?

    GO_FILES = $(shell find . -type f -name '*.go')

    ./myapp: $(GO_FILES)
        go build -trimpath -o $@
Honestly, it's still simpler to read.

> Makefiles are incredibly terse, but that's not an advantage.

Brevity is not why I prefer Makefile syntax over YAML, readability is. The minute you start trying to do anything large in a YAML definition you're going to need special editor help to keep track of indentation, and even with that, a large tree is still going to be lost off-screen because the context of any node in the tree depends on seeing the lines immediately above.

With Makefiles, any node in the tree has immediate context on the same line (the dependencies) which makes it very readable to me. I really prefer:

    target: dep1 dep2 dep3 dep4
compared to:

    tasks:
      dep3:
        cmds:
          - ...
        sources:
          - ...
        generates:
          - ...
      dep2:
        cmds:
          - ...
        sources:
          - ...
        generates:
          - ...
      dep1:
        cmds:
          - ...
        sources:
          - ...
        generates:
          - ...
      target:
        cmds:
          - ...
        sources:
          - ...
        generates:
          - ...




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