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Comment by celticmusic | Hacker News Reader

You have make call the platform specific build systems.

What's the point in a project that only uses a single build system? You're essentially getting nothing out of make except indirection. Might as well just have a build.sh at the root of the repo.

> You're essentially getting nothing out of make except indirection

The thing you're getting is some familiarity, I think (because of the indirection). It's sort of like using a `package.json` for the scripts section, but you get to have comments, and there's less other random stuff in there.

I definitely understand why many would think this is over-kill though. A proper readme is probably just as good/better.

familiarity, documenting the process for building, and last but not least, access to the entire unix toolchain.

I have done so in the past. This leads to a lot of duplication though.

I use it mostly so when I come back to the project after months, the Makefile is a reminder of how to build it. Also autocompletion.

Wouldn't it just be like a build.sh? And makefile is not cross platform enough, especially on Windows.

I can't speak to the others, but if you've installed rubygems on Windows, you've installed mingW, and you have access to those tools. This is because rubygems will not build source gems against microsofts toolchain, but against the gcc toolchain ala mingW.

If you prefer using Powershell on Windows, great (or bat if you're a masochist). The point was that being in Ruby doesn't automatically invalidate the use of make as a build tool.

Yeah, maybe it is true for Ruby development on Windows, but not for others, says Node.js. Developing Node.js on Windows is (comparatively) easy to do so, usually you only need to install `node` and `npm`, then optionally install `yarn` and `windows-build-tools`. None of these steps will give you GNU toolchain, so it won't available until you install it.

That is ehy I prefer OS-agnostic tools such as npm or npm+gulp for more complex build tools.

make IS an OS-agnostic tool, it's just not available by default on Windows. But it can absolutely be installed. Or you can bring the mingW/ binaries along with you. Even something as simple as installing git for windows will give you access to a decentish unix environment.

staying inside rake, et al is fine if your software is simple enough to get away with it (by simple I mean self-contained without too many moving parts). But quite often you can't get away with that, and make becomes a good choice.

I would also argue that if you're developing ruby on windows you're doing it wrong. You can do it, but I would personally never target Windows for a ruby app. been there, done that, have the scars to prove it.

I would also add that installing all of that for node doesn't really seem to be simpler than using make, but that's just my old timer sensibilities coming into play.

Here is how to use tools on Windows via my chocolatey packages without WSL, mingW etc.

    cinst ruby                        # install ruby
    cinst msys2 --params "/NoUpdate"  # install msys2 without 
    system update
    Update-SessionEnvironment         # refresh environment vars
    ridk install 2 3

See notes on https://chocolatey.org/packages/msys2

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