Likelihood to Recommend GNU Make is a great tool for simple builds where language-specific options are not available, or to provide shortcuts for common commands (e.g., "make build" as shorthand for "go build ..." with a bunch of flags). However, it is complementary to other build systems. It does not replace them, which is perhaps one of its greatest strengths as well (works with existing ecosystem instead of trying to do everything). GMU Make it simple to get started with, and the philosophy of understanding how sources map to outputs, as well as the dependency graph, are beneficial.
Read full review I recommend JRebel for Java developers, it will remove the time needed for redeployment, it will increase the focus on the task at hand (without being distracted by the redeployment) and will make them happier. I recommend JRebel for Java Development Managers, they should purchase this for their teams - it will increase productivity, decrease the product's time to market, and it will save money for the company. The ROI can be calculated upfront and presented to higher level management for approving this, if needed.
Read full review Pros Performance and accuracy of cross-module dependencies. Simple to write and easy to understand. Read full review Deploys all layout changes consistently (when Instant Run was initially available, you couldn't tell if the change you made to a layout was actually being tested or not). Doesn't require a full build as often as Instant Run when changing code. Works with compile time annotation libraries like Realm, etc. Read full review Cons No dependency management tools (but there are no cross-platform tools of this type anyway) Tedious to do cross-compilation (Debug & Release builds, 32- and 64-bit builds, x86/ARM builds) Read full review It worked great, no big cons Read full review Performance The performance of JRebel is great. It is enabling the Java team to do hot re-deployments and it has to be transparent and fast for the user, otherwise the whole purpose of reducing wasted time with re-deployments doesn't make sense. Also the User Interface for License Server management and analytics loads fast and the navigation through pages is quick.
Read full review Support Rating In general, it is fair to say the support is sufficient although we do not deal with support directly. There are a lot of forum people chiming in with suggestions or recommendations of particular usage or issues we run into. Since it is open software, patch and fixes will be available from time to time. A lot of information is available in the web now for knowing GNU Make from learning, example, teaching, etc.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I'm a full-stack developer that has used various build tools, including Maven,
Gradle , and NPM/yarn. For our C projects, I also investigated CMake and Ninja, but they seemed more difficult to learn and more tedious to work with. GNU Make is a single binary that can be easily downloaded, even for Windows under MingW32, is straightforward to learn, and works pretty well despite its age.
Read full review Hot code swapping doesn't have many players...it's mainly JRebel. We use JRebel a lot in our backend code development where it minimizes our development cycle (20min down to 30sec). For Android, the competitor is Android Studio's Instant Run which works fairly well now. For smaller apps, Instant Run is faster deploying but needs more full builds. With JRebel, you hardly ever need to do a full build.
Read full review Return on Investment Streamline the build based on a lot of existing component being done, reusable. Commonly understandable, therefore, rampup effort is small. Read full review It sped up the developing time, and time is money for the company. Read full review ScreenShots