Introduction

Make is specified by POSIX 7 http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/make.html and implemented by GNU with extensions. It is the de facto standard make tool for POSIX systems.

Make allows you to:

make command line interfaces of the type:
```
make <something> a=b c=d
```
very easily.
only build outputs when inputs have changed

This may save lots of time when building large projects.

Pros and cons

The main problems of make are:

not available on Windows
its Yet Another Scripting Language to learn, and uses Bash inside of it

Alternatives

Because of the downsides of make, many other make systems have been devised. None has yet dominated on most applications, but important ones include:

CMake
Rake.

Similar to make, Ruby implemented with Makefiles written in pure Ruby.
Apache Ant.

Written in Java, mainly used for Java project.

Makefiles are written in XML, so a bit verbose to write by hand.