don't use makefile :)

[dougwilson]

would anyone be offended if i moved the stuff in makefile into the npm scripts?

[jonathanong]

It'll be more useful later when we have multiple pages because it does all that mtime checking as well

[dougwilson]

gotcha. hm, i wonder if there is a good way to keep both... for now i'm going to check in the npm scripts so it's easy for me to run this stuff :)

[Fishrock123]

Why can't we do this in a js script?

[rlidwka]

Because make exists already and does a better job?

I don't really understand that urge to rewrite anything in javascript...

[Fishrock123]

Idk I think make doesn't run well on windows or something, doesn't actually matter much to me.

[rlidwka]

well make runs rather nicely on windows under vagrant :)

[dougwilson]

i can run Makefile with dmake :) I just find that it's nice, especially for new-comers, to not need other tools outside the language the repo is about, since it raises the barrier to entry.

[jonathanong]

alternative is to make a watch script

[rlidwka]

Here is probably what will be our makefile soon:

NODE ?= node
NPM  ?= npm

index.html: node_modules src/* src/db.json
   @${NODE} src/build.js

# command to rebuild db.json, will be executed
# only once if src/db.json isn't present
src/db.json:
   @${NODE} --harmony src/make-db.js

# `make db` will force rebuilding db.json even if it exists
db:
   @${MAKE} --always-make src/db.json

# removes autogenerated files
clean:
   rm src/db.json index.html

# install all packages if they don't exist (repo just been cloned)
node_modules: package.json
   @${NPM} install .

.PHONY: db clean

And here are deployment instructions:

Just run `make`, it'll do everything :)

If you do that with npm scripts, you have to ask users to do:

• npm install .
• npm run build-db
• npm run build

If I have node.js installed as /usr/bin/node-0.11, I run NODE=/usr/bin/node-0.11 make, and you simply can't do that in npm scripts.

So all right you can use npm scripts if it works for you, but I don't see any real alternatives here.

[dougwilson]

we should probably add a readme that contains rebuilding instructions, by the way

[jonathanong]

i prefer no makefile for open source projects just so we have the lowest barrier to contribution possible. i always use makefiles in my personal projects though...