Is there an automated tool to convert Makefile to Taskfile for migration purposes?

[QinZhanlong]

Is there an automated tool to convert Makefile to Taskfile for migration purposes?

[pd93]

I've been asked this a few times now. Maybe this is something we could add to our FAQ. Unfortunately, the answer is no - At least not that I'm aware of.

While there is a lot of overlap between the two, make was written primarily as a build system whereas task was built as a task runner. This means that outside of basic usage, their features can actually be quite different and I don't think a direct translation would always be possible.

Even if it is possible, it would be a significant task to maintain something that could map between Makefile's complex syntax and YAML and support multiple versions of both tools without breaking whenever one tool updates. Happy to be proven wrong by anyone who fancies giving it a go though!

My general advice would be to spend the time to manually write your new Taskfiles. Task approaches some things in a different way and you might find that manually writing the files will make you want to change a few things anyway. It might take longer than a magic translation tool, but you will gain a better understanding of the resulting files and of Task itself.