Mark Leighton Fisher

Following up Stupid Unix Tricks: Workflow Control with GNU Make -- this trick works on any platform with a make(1) program, including Windows, QNX, VMS, and z/OS.

It also serves to de-couple dependency checking and the workflow execution engine from the rest of your program (with the caveat that your program may need to interpret the output from make(1).)

(And if you squint hard enough, make(1) appears to have the sequencing property of a monad.)