daily-email: add 2023-04-11

src/content/daily-email/2023-04-11.md

@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+---
+title: >
+  just vs make
+pubDate: 2023-04-11
+permalink: >
+  archive/2023/04/11/just-vs-make
+tags:
+  - devops
+  - just
+  - make
+  - linux
+---
+
+`just` compared to `make` is something that was asked during my PHP London talk, and whilst they are similar, `just` has differences for me that explains why I use it:
+
+## Tabs or spaces
+
+A Makefile needs to use tabs. Justfiles are more flexible and work with tabs or any number of spaces.
+
+## .PHONY
+
+With a Makefile, you need to declare some targets as "phony". I believe that this is for targets that don't generate artifact files with that name, so as I'm not compiling and building files with `make`, this is redundant and adds visual noise.
+
+## Passing arguments
+
+This is how a `composer` target looks like in a Makefile:
+
+```make
+composer:
+	docker compose exec php composer
+```
+
+With this, I'd expect to be able to pass arguments to it - e.g. `make composer info drupal/core`.
+
+But, instead of seeing the expected output, I get an error: `make: *** No rule to make target 'info'.  Stop.`.
+
+This is what I'd need to do to pass arguments to the `composer` target:
+
+```make
+composer:
+	docker compose exec php composer $(COMPOSER_ARGS)
+```
+
+Now I can run `make composer COMPOSER_ARGS="info drupal/core"` and see what I was expecting but the syntax isn't what I'd want.
+
+`just`, on the other hand, allows for defining parameters to its recipes: 
+
+```yaml
+composer *args:
+  docker compose exec php composer {{ args }}
+```
+
+Here, I can create as many named parameters as needed and use them in the recipe with the syntax that I wanted - `just composer info drupal/core`.
+
+I can think of a few others but this is is the main reason why I moved from `make` and later adopted `just`.
+
+`just`, for me, gives the flexibilty that I need whilst using a simple and familiar syntax but without some of the confusing and complicated behaviours of `make`.