Re: make and package manager

On Thu, 28 May 2026 at 02:40, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 May 2026 08:29:09 am Greg Wooledge wrote:

> > "make" is a tool used in software development.  It has a man page:
> > <https://manpages.debian.org/make>

> Looked that over,  then tried "info make" which had a bit more in it,
> but not as much as I'd like.  I have tried to read makefiles and find it
> difficult to get a handle on just what's going on there.  Do you know of
> any other resources that might help with this?

Hi, the canonical user reference for Gnu Make is the Gnu Make Manual [1].

The mailing list [2] for Make usage assistance is archived at [3].

Some key steps to understanding makefiles are:
- They are *not* executed from top to bottom.
- They contain two entirely different syntaxes (Make and shell).
- They are parsed in at least two passes, nothing is executed in the first
  pass.
- There is *no* workaround for the fact that space character is a token
  separator. So Make can *not* operate with file or directory names that
  contain whitespace characters.
- Tab and space character are syntactically very different. So it's
  essential to use a viewer or editor that displays them differently.
- Like many other complex tools, the best way to begin using Make is to
  start using it in the simplest manner possible, and then add complexity
  in small manageable steps.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-make
[3] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-make/