General and specific make questions

[Grünewald Michaël]

Le 8 juin 09 à 23:20, Polytropon a écrit :

> On Mon, 8 Jun 2009 22:12:17 +0200, Roland Smith <rsmith at xs4all.nl>  
> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 11:52:17PM -0500, Lars Eighner wrote:
>>>
>>> What I need most is to find (a) make tutorial(s) that do not  
>>> suppose make is
>>> being used for compling c/c++ programs.  Yes, I know, that is  
>>> mostly why
>>> make exists, but many tutorials plunge right into C examples with  
>>> implicit C
>>> rules, while -- it seems to me -- make could be much more useful  
>>> for a
>>> variety of things, and I could sure use more of the general and  
>>> arbitrary
>>> examples.
>>
>> I use make to e.g. build complex LaTeX documents with included  
>> gnuplot
>> graphs. Works like a charm. But that it is not conceptually different
>> from compiling a C program.
>
> Correct. I do the same here.

I also do use make to produce LaTeX documents. I even `published' my  
collection of makefiles at https://gna.org/projects/bsdmakepscripts/

There is some terse indications for using these makefiles in a TeX  
document:

http://home.gna.org/bsdmakepscripts/tex.html

(much more need to be written as usual). An interesting feature of  
these scripts is the good integration of METAPOST and BIBTEX (this is  
not yet exemplified).


As you have guessed, make can be used for much more than C files  
compilation, but as it has been pointed out, these other uses are not  
conceptually different from the `C-case'. In fact in the typical way  
of using a UNIX-like workstation, data is processed through a stack of  
elementary treatments in order to obtain a final object (whether it is  
a program, a PostScript file or a full web site). This is why make can  
be viewed as the central part of the work with a UNIX-like workstation  
(sharing its place with an editor of your choice).
-- 
All the best,
Michaël