> If you're going to rely on a fancy shell anyway, why not just throw make out of the loop altogether?
I think can still add value in that scenario as the standard project entrypoint. Someone completely new to the project should be able to `make help`, `make install`, etc. Even if the make targets are simple wrappers to project specific tooling (npm, pip, sbt, etc). If the Makefile is kept simple, then users can treat it as a form of README and should be able to cherry-pick from it as they see fit.
But yeah, I share your sentiment about quirky, non-portable Makefiles potentially being anti-value.
I certainly like it when I encounter a new project, type make, and it just works.
This is rare these days.. honestly at this point there's so much tooling already around that one can't really ever take that for granted. Almost always, I need to look for some readme or look around and figure out what build system is in use (sometimes it's a common system plus custom stuff so just seeing a name you recognize isn't automatically going to mean the standard invocation will work).
In this case, it hardly matters whether I'm going to run make or ./build or make help or ./build help. A simple script, which I'm advocating for simple projects, can double as a form of README just as a Makefile can.
I think can still add value in that scenario as the standard project entrypoint. Someone completely new to the project should be able to `make help`, `make install`, etc. Even if the make targets are simple wrappers to project specific tooling (npm, pip, sbt, etc). If the Makefile is kept simple, then users can treat it as a form of README and should be able to cherry-pick from it as they see fit.
But yeah, I share your sentiment about quirky, non-portable Makefiles potentially being anti-value.