When comparing GNU Make vs Tup, the Slant community recommends GNU Make for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source build systems for C/C++?” GNU Make is ranked 3rd while Tup is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose GNU Make is:
Make takes advantage of the powerful UNIX shell, using it at it's full potential. STDIN and STDOUT are especially useful because of their versatility.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Uses the full power of the UNIX shell
Make takes advantage of the powerful UNIX shell, using it at it's full potential. STDIN and STDOUT are especially useful because of their versatility.
Pro No need for wrapper modules
Other build tools need wrapper modules to do certain tasks. The biggest disadvantage of these wrapper modules is that they bind you to a version of that tool. With Make you don't have that problem, there's no need for wrappers and no tools to bind you to a version, you can use any version of Make that you want.
Pro Works with more than just node.js
Since it's written in C and can be found in all UNIX-based systems it can be used on platforms other than node.js.
Pro Speed
It is very fast.
Pro Tidy
It will automatically clean-up old files.
Pro General
Not bound to C/C++.
Pro Lua
Tup supports writing build definitions using Lua or Tupfiles.
Pro Cross platform
Supports Linux, OSX, and Windows.
Cons
Con Doesn't run on Windows by default
Make requires Cygwin/msys2/MinGW to run on Windows.
Con Variants not working on Windows
The solution for having different build configuration (think Release/Debug) is broken on Windows.
Con Cannot incrementally modify or delete files
Cannot incrementally modify files (e.g. LaTeX PDF, VISing and LIGHTing Quake maps, which takes the same BSP file as input and output), and will not delete files (e.g. rm build/*.o).