Make is a simple but powerful tool for managing a build process in a language-independent manner.
Make is a domain-specific language for encoding a dependence graph.
By writing a make file you are instructing the program make to synthesize files from dependencies.
Make is widely available in many platforms and can easily be installed in others where it's not available as default (e.g. Windows).
file-to-generate : dependency (or dependencies) instruction on how to generate the file
Note: The instructions should be indented by a single <tab>.
$< are the input files. I.e the .md file in a pandoc command
$@ is the output file.