Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderFor one-line recipes you can use semicolon foo.o: foo.c ; $(CC) $< If you find $(@D) hard to remember then do $(dir $@) instead. I wrote a book about GNU Make stuff (https://nostarch.com/gnumake). If (and only if) you've read the GNU Make Manual from the FSF my book may help you. It's not for newbies. Don't want the book? All the articles are here: https://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make-art...
I like parts of it! The tabs vs spaces thing seems pretty silly to me. If your editor is randomly swapping tabs and spaces, get a better editor. Tab is the default in a makefile and that seems fine. The suggestion to use "> " instead of tab just looks noisier. The observation about the filesystem is good and hopefully well known. The way to think about makefiles is as a tool for creating files (it is very oriented toward…
Headline is "(Your) Makefiles are Wrong."
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 612
- Total comments
- 380
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-12-17 | An opinionated approach to GNU MakeFirst breakout · Best thread | DarkCrusader2 | 414 | 194 |
| 2022-08-14 | Your Makefiles Are Wrong | spansoa | 2 | 0 |
| 2022-08-21 | An opinionated approach to GNU MakeLatest 20+ point return | hasheddan | 185 | 185 |
| 2024-05-10 | Makefiles Are Wrong (2019) | 0x000042 | 8 | 0 |
| 2025-03-17 | Makefiles Are Wrong (2019)Hall induction | Tomte | 3 | 1 |