Makefiles fasten compilation.
GCC/binutils apart, compiling #Jehanne from scratch take 2 to 3 minutes. A whole operating system, including kernel, userspace programs and all.
When makefiles where invented compiling and linking a simple hello world used to take minutes, so it was rational to spend computing cycles to minimize the amount of compiled code keeping track of the modified files and their dependencies.
But is this still true today?
To be honest, I don't think so.
Today makefiles and similar tools are used to tame the huge complexity of big codebases, while the right think to do would be to avoid writing such big codebase from the beginning.
That's basically why I did't port neither gnu make nor plan9 mk to #Jehanne: I don't think we should still use them.
In other words, I would suggest you to use a simple lisp (or rc, or sh or... whatever) script to build your code instead of make and similar tools.
