jrm4

Interesting. So I'm a weird sort, I imagine, in that I'm the type that has been using Linux and shell scripts for 20+ years, but never actually done any big-time coding, and thus I really don't know "make."

Point being, I do something very similar to this; except I first simply write/create my website in Zim-wiki, but then I have a bunch of little tasks to "clean up," i.e. fix/modify some links and then use the Canvas API to update my main course page (which, because I hate Canvas that much, simply links out to my own site).

Why make instead of shell scripts?

0cf8612b2e1e
My number one reason to use make is to have a single centralized location for project commands. If I see a Makefile at the root, I can quickly scan it and have an overview of what high level actions I might execute.

Note that I have recently switched to Just (https://github.com/casey/just). While not technically the exact feature set as make, it covers all of the ground for what I typically do. It gets the benefit of history and discards a lot of make cruft to make a more predictable experience.