Make-ing my life easier

At the time of writing, my blog directory is certainly cluttered, and I really don’t want that. It prevents me from easily checking my website (I’m not sure if the clutter caused my occasional lack of proper documentation or if it’s the other way around), but this has to change. Here, I plan to briefly document the next 10 minutes for myself so that it all makes sense.

My objective here is to quickly create a Makefile with a local set of instructions that will:

1. Create a public directory and populate it.
2. Launch a Python server.

Using the local-build.sh script, I knew this wouldn’t take long. Since it’s an open-source file and I’m not particularly concerned about the confidentiality of its contents, I uploaded it to ChatGPT, asking for it to be refactored and documented into a Makefile:

# Makefile for building and publishing a site  
# Directories  
PUBLIC_DIR := public  
POSTS_DIR := $(PUBLIC_DIR)/posts  

# Targets  
.DEFAULT_GOAL := local  

# Remove local directory  
clean:  
	@if [ -d $(PUBLIC_DIR) ]; then \  
		rm -rf $(PUBLIC_DIR) && echo "Local directory deleted"; \  
	fi  

# Build the site using Emacs  
build: clean  
	emacs -Q --script build-site.el  

# Add latest posts to /index.html  
add_latest_posts:  
	echo "Adding mini archive on /index.html"  
	echo '<ul class="org-ul indexul">' > /tmp/index  
	grep "^<li>" $(PUBLIC_DIR)/posts/recents.html | head -5 >> /tmp/index  
	echo '</ul>' >> /tmp/index  
	sed -i -e '/Latest Articles<\/a><\/h2>/r /tmp/index' $(PUBLIC_DIR)/index.html  

# Copy /index.html to /posts/index.html  
copy_index_to_posts:  
	echo "Copying /index to /posts/index"  
	cp $(PUBLIC_DIR)/index.html $(POSTS_DIR)/index.html  

# Build the site locally  
local: build add_latest_posts copy_index_to_posts  

It did a great job, which I suppose is also due to the script’s clear, albeit not overly extensive, comments.

Adding a new target and updating local completes the setup:

# Serve the public directory on localhost using Python  
serve_local:  
	cd $(PUBLIC_DIR) && python -m http.server  

At this point, everything is working perfectly and is well-documented enough that I could refactor the entire blog. Spaghetti code is not just prevalent but is visible in its very structure and organization, making maintenance challenging. This Makefile makes things far more manageable.

It’s truly fascinating that in much less than fifteen minutes, I managed to:

• Make a shell script obsolete.
• Make another shell script obsolete, further reducing the mess I had embraced—and my discomfort along with it.
• Better streamline the entire publishing process by creating a central file to manage it (the Makefile).
• Write this simple article.

And all this with minimal experience in using and creating Makefiles. In fact, I initially considered writing one manually and even Googled Makefile templates before realizing what a waste of time that would be. Ah, what a wonderful and peculiar time to be alive!