Recipe for using the make utility

(a) Make a directory $HOME/bin if it is not already there.

(b) Download the file

into this directory as makefile.global.

(c) Then in your working directory, with some .tex files and some .py files, put something like the following

as makefile. It should contain only local file names that you want to update automatically.

Finally, you want this global file to be read when you `make' stuff. Put in your shell file a line to alias `make' by some simple command like m or mk. This will become short for make -f ~/bin/makefile.global. I use bash, and the line is

alias m='make -f ~/bin/makefile.global'

Now, whenever I type 'm' it reads the global makefile and takes appropriate action specified by my local makefile.

Changing your shell

Instead of typing bash every time you open a terminal window, you can change your shell to bash for a while by typing

chsh -s bash (user-name)

in a terminal window. If you later want to change back to tcsh, type chsh -s tcsh (user-name).