FINDING 01·Windows developers doing multi-language or Fortran/C development·1 source
Make's poor cross-platform support, especially on Windows
Users report that GNU Make has well-known issues on Windows platforms, including path separator conflicts (slash vs. backslash) and shell determination problems, making it unreliable for cross-platform development workflows.
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“I've read a little about gnu make, and that its got some issues on windows platforms (from slash/backslash, to shell determination ...) so I would like to hear what are my alternatives to it?”
FINDING 02·Engineering teams managing large or monorepo codebases·1 source
Make struggles with large projects and complex dependency graphs
Users note that Make has well-documented weaknesses when dealing with large-scale projects, yet alternatives have not achieved wide adoption, leaving teams stuck with a tool that doesn't scale well.
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“Despite Make's many weaknesses and difficulties dealing with large projects (e.g. see http://freshmeat.net/articles/what-is-wrong-with-make) it appears to still be more widely used than newer, improved alternatives such as Scons, Jam, Rake, Cook, and others.”
FINDING 03·Experienced developers and build engineers·2 sources
Make's implementation quality lags behind its core concept
Long-time Make users acknowledge the dependency-tracking concept is sound but find the actual implementation frustrating and in need of improvement, driving a persistent search for alternatives over many years (evidenced by discussions spanning 2008–2022).
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“I've been using make and makefiles for many many years, and although the concept is sound, the implementation has something to be desired. Has anyone found any good alternatives to make that don't overcomplicate the problem?”
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“Are there any new Make alternatives that I should try for building a multi-language, monorepo project that also has a number of Linux system dependencies?”
FINDING 04·Data engineers and researchers running chained CLI computation workflows on UNIX·1 source
Difficulty chaining data computation pipelines with Make
Data-oriented users find Make conceptually suitable for chaining command-line computation steps (similar to spreadsheet cell dependencies), but its limitations push them to look for better-suited alternatives for data pipeline orchestration.
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“On UNIX, I have to produce numeric results out of previous data by means of various command-line utilities... I don't want to run the risk to have outdated derived data, so I need to chain the data dependency through the utilities... the first idea you can have is to use make, which is something I already had experience with. It is trivial, and fits the task well.”
FINDING 05·Indie developers and researchers building multi-language projects·1 source
Lack of a clear, widely-adopted Make alternative for multi-language / monorepo projects
Developers starting greenfield or monorepo projects involving multiple languages (Python, Julia, Rust, C/C++, CUDA) and system dependencies find no obvious, consensus alternative to Make, prompting repeated community asks across years.
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“I'm starting a new greenfield personal project which is a great time to try something new. Are there any new Make alternatives that I should try for building a multi-language, monorepo project that also has a number of Linux system dependencies?”