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@ -241,8 +241,28 @@ Many tools were made for one thing, and over time have evolved into another thin
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This can happen by conscious design or, more commonly,
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This can happen by conscious design or, more commonly,
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from an industry or community picking a tool up and using it for something it was not originally designed for.
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from an industry or community picking a tool up and using it for something it was not originally designed for.
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While hacking tools for uses they were not designed for is always fun and in many cases the only way to do something,
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While hacking tools for uses they were not designed for is always fun and in many cases the only way to do something,
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its perhaps better to make a dedicated tool when the new usecase eclipses
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its perhaps better to make a dedicated tool when the design choices made for the old usecases start hindering the new usecases.
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<!-- look at just command runner, simplifying the common use case of make-->
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A great example of this is [just](https://github.com/casey/just), a command runner heavily inspired by GNU make.
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Make was (and in large part still is) a C build system.
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As such, it includes features such as implicit rules
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(if a file called `foo.o` is needed and there is no explicit rule is there, the C compiler will be invoked on the file `foo.c`
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(there are similar rules for C++ and linking))
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and file modification time laziness
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(fantastic as a build system, needs liberal sprinkling of `.PHONY` rules when used as a task runner).
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These features are *good* features when make is being used as a build system,
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but another major use of make that has emerged has been as a way to run common tasks.
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so alongside `make build` to buld your program, you would have `make bootstrap`, `make test`, `make config`, etc.
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This is where the design decisions behind make the build system start to hinder make the task runner,
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making one learn about make the build system in order to work around those features to use make the task runner.
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However, make cant drop these features, both because projects still actively use make as a build system,
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and because even makefiles that are just used as taskrunners still work around the footguns and
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would be broken by make making large changes to its syntax and semantics.
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However, Just was designed from the outset to be a command runner, and as a result,
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it is much easier to pick up the just language and make a quick set of commands that can be run.
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By leaving behind the old tool, a new tool can be made that better fits the tasks that people use the tool for.
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## The trendsetter
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## The trendsetter
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@ -256,10 +276,10 @@ its perhaps better to make a dedicated tool when the new usecase eclipses
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## Appendix: the tools
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## Appendix: the tools
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This is an extremely unscientific table of command line tools that I have tried,
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This is an extremely unscientific table of command line tools that I have tried, have used, or currently use.
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have used, or currently use. It is assuredly incomplete, but *should* be broadly
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It is assuredly incomplete, but *should* be broadly representative.
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representative. The date data has been gathered from the first git commit where
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The date data has been gathered from the first git commit where available,
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available, wikipedia otherwise, and sorting is by year first, then alphabetical.
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wikipedia otherwise, and sorting is by year first, then alphabetical.
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|tool|year|language|
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|tool|year|language|
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