make is a command generator. Using a description file and some general templates, it creates a sequence of commands for execution by the UNIX shell. These commands commonly relate to the maintenance of the files comprising a software development project. Here, ``maintenance'' refers to a whole array of tasks, ranging from status reporting and the purging of temporary files, to building the final, executable version of a complex group of programs.
The description file is usually named as Makefile or makefile. After this file is created, one can run the program make to make executables as described in the makefile:
make