How often will a programmer be asked to write a makefile file? [closed]

Question

Is makefile an advanced problem or a general problem for a programmer? For a C++ programmer, how often will he be asked to write a makefile file?

Answer 1

Nobody ever writes a Makefile. They take an existing Makefile and modify it.

Just be thankful you don't have to deal with IMakefile. (For those of you who were lucky enough to never deal with this, or who have managed to forget, IMakefile was a file that was sort of a meta-Makefile for X Window System based projects which would be used to generate a Makefile that knew where you'd installed all your X Windows libraries and binaries. Needless to say, it sucked.)

Answer 2

Setting up a meaningful build system is part of the craft. I'd expect any non-super-junior developer to be able to come up with a makefile.

Answer 3

As often as he is asked to start on a brand new project, which is not similar to an existing project whose builds scripts can be adapted. That is not a good answer I guess, but in my experience there has always been some code/resources/build scripts that I can adapt.

On a different note, for any C++ programmer, it is important to learn how his code is built. Makefiles, Ant scripts etc are just the implementation mechanism. So I think it is important enough to learn.