I use a Makefile to move my emacs configuration from its git repo in my home directory to the emacs config directory. There are a variety of better ways a person could move files from one place to another and a Makefile probably wouldn't be the wisest first choice. Writing a script to execute a copy command would be very straightforward and absolutely be a more sane choice.

I wanted to learn a little more about the tool and this seemed like a fun way to waste some time doing it. I did waste a lot of time doing it, but I learned a lot about the tool. I learned enough to make use of it in more useful circumstances. So it wasn't a total wash.

I will say this for using a Makefile instead of a script: it is weirdly satisfying only seeing the files you've modified get deployed to where they need to go. I thought it might be fun to go through how that works in the context of my emacs Makefile.

After this experiment I ended up adopted Makefiles for several things including ersatz.website. It is surprisingly useful and fairly quick to write once you know what you're doing.