TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    GNU Make

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/AGNU Make is an open source and free build automation tool.N/A

    Salt

    Score6.2 out of 10
    N/AVMware Salt is an Infrastructure Automation & Configuration Management platform that provisions, configures, deploys, and manages infrastructure components at scale. The solution utilizes an event-driven automation engine to enforce compliant software states across virtual machines, servers, containers, and network devices. The VMware Salt solution is comprised of software components from both VMware and the open-source Salt Project While the Salt Masters and Salt Minions are a part of the open…N/A
    Pricing
    GNU MakeSalt
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    GNU MakeSalt
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    GNU MakeSalt
    Small Businesses
    Apache Maven
    Score9.1 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Apache Maven
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Perforce Puppet
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Score9 out of 10
    Ansible
    Score9.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    GNU MakeSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (10 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    GNU MakeSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    SaltStack is a very well architected toolset and framework for reliably managing distributed systems' complexity at varied scale. If the diversity of kind or number of assets is low, or the dependencies are bounded and simple, it might be overkill. Realization that you need SaltStack might come in the form of other tools, scripts, or jobs whose code has become difficult, unreliable, or unmaintainable. Rather than a native from-scratch SaltStack design, be aware that SaltStack can be added on to tools like Docker or Chef and optionally factor those tools out or other tools into the mix.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Open Source
    • Performance and accuracy of cross-module dependencies.
    • Simple to write and easy to understand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • Targeting is easy and yet extremely granular - I can target machines by name, role, operating system, init system, distro, regex, or any combination of the above.
    • Abstraction of OS, package manager and package details is far advanced beyond any other CRM I have seen. The ability to set one configuration for a package across multiple distros, and have it apply correctly no matter the distrospecific naming convention or package installation procedure, is amazing.
    • Abstraction of environments is similarly valuable - I can set a firewall rule to allow ssh from "management", and have that be defined as a specific IP range per dev, test, and prod.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Open Source
    • 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)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • Managing network hardware should be more native and easy
    • SaltStack should buffer jobs and, when a client returns, make sure it is executed proberly
    • SaltStack should provide basic pillar and states structures to help get newbies started
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    We haven't had to spend a lot of time talking to support, and we've only had one issue, which, when dealing with other vendors is actually not that bad of an experience.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    We moved to SaltStack from Puppet about 3 years ago. Puppet just has too much of a learning curve and we inherited it from an old IT regime. We wanted something we could start fresh with. Our team has never looked back. SaltStack is so much easier for us to use and maintain.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • Streamline the build based on a lot of existing component being done, reusable.
    • Commonly understandable, therefore, rampup effort is small.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • We manage two complex highly available self-healing (all infrastructure and systems) environments using SaltStack. Only one person is needed to run SaltStack. That is a HUGE return on investment.
    • Building tooling on top of SaltStack has allowed us to share administrative abilities by role - e.g. employee X can deploy software Y. No need to call a sysadmin and etc.
    • Recovery from problems, or time to stand-up new systems is now counted in minutes (usually under eight) rather than hours. This is a strategic advantage for rolling out new services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots