Re: Could bash do what make does?

[Eduardo Bustamante]

"build market"? What are you talking about? make was created with the
sole purpose of build automation. The shell was created to provide a
"human interface" to computer operators. These are very specific and
different purposes. Are you going to start asking next to re-implement
vi inside bash? to re-implement a mail user agent? a C compiler? Where
do you draw the line? Read:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/creeping-featurism.html

I doubt anyone is willing to go through the effort to re-implement all
the features that make provides, just because one guy thinks "it's
obsolete" -- it's not, by the way. make is very alive. Also, it is
part of the POSIX international standard. so any operating system that
claims to be compatible with UNIX must provide it, see [1] and [2] and
[3].

Also remember that nothing makes a stronger argument than patches. If
you want to see this feature implemented, I suggest that you start
looking into the features make provides, and send patches to add said
functionality to bash.

[1] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/make.html
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/make/
[3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-make/