Almost all programs follow some common build steps (mostly with the GNU Build system, some also with a CMake system. To avoid repeating the same set of steps, we currently have some Make functions in 'reproduce/software/make/build-rules.mk'.

But Make functions have some peculiarities that make them hard to maintain when they get long! For example they need to be seen as one long line! So we need to put '\' at the end of all lines and ';' at the end of commands and can't have comments.

So it is much better to have scripts instead of Make functions.