emacs; select menu Help->Tutorial or type C-h t
(that is, the combination CTRL-h
followed by the key t ).
A New Era of Performance Evaluation,
Pieper, S.M.; Paul, J.M.; Schulte, M.J.;
Computer
Volume 40, Issue 9, Sept. 2007 Page(s):23 - 30
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MC.2007.296
useful picture at Figure 1: traditional and modern computer usage (monolithic functional spec of s/w vs multithread interactions at various frequencies.)
from Pieper et al, A new Era of Performance Evaluation, Computer, Sept 2007, pp 23–30
The make utility is the first of the "dependency-tracking build utilities" (in
Wikipedia's phrase). It uses a text file that describes a set of formal
relationships of dependencies
between named, timestamped objects (which are real or imaginary computer files) and
associated actions (operating system shell script commands) that the
user intends the computer to apply in order to bring the objects up to
date, according to the relationship between their timestamps.
The
formal idea behind make is dependency, which can
be expressed in the mathematical concept of the dependency
graph (see Wikipedia:
dependency graph for example.
Wikipedia entry especially the Origin section.Origin
There are now a number of dependency-tracking build utilities, but make is one of the most wide-spread, primarily due to its inclusion in Unix, starting with the PWB/UNIX 1.0, which featured a variety of tools targeting software development tasks. It was originally created by Stuart Feldman in 1977 at Bell Labs. In 2003 Dr. Feldman received the ACM Software System Award for the invention of this important tool.[1]
Before make's introduction, the Unix build system would most likely consist of "make" and "install" shell scripts accompanying a program's source. Being able to combine the commands for the different targets into a single file, and being able to abstract out dependency tracking and archive handling, was an important step in the direction of modern build environments.
make for a user and from
an implementation point of view.
For anyone interested in different ways of developing software (in particular, the idea of Open Source projects versus organised design and construction), one of the classic thoughtful descriptions is Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar.