Home Maker: Declare and manage dev tools in a Makefile

What it does

Home Maker is a Makefile-based system for declaring and managing development tools across multiple package managers. Instead of remembering individual installation commands scattered across different systems—apt, cargo, uv, go, npm, curl scripts—developers write tool declarations in plain-text .mk files grouped by purpose. A single Makefile then generates install targets that can be run with make toolname.

Who it is for

This is built for developers who accumulate tools from many sources and need to replicate their setup on new machines or during reinstalls. The audience understands Makefiles and shell commands. It is not for developers seeking a graphical interface or those already committed to configuration management systems like Nix or Ansible.

Pricing

The site does not show prices.

How it stands out

Home Maker avoids adding another abstraction layer or requiring a new tool to learn. It uses Makefiles, which most developers already know, plus optional bash and fzf for searching. The system is minimal: five package-manager variables (APT, CARGO, UV, GO, NPM), simple += append syntax for declarations, and macro-based target generation. Each tool can override its package name via a PKG_ variable if the declared name differs from the actual package name. The result is readable, version-controllable, and portable—a single directory of text files that documents the complete setup.

What a founder should check

First, investigate how many developers currently use Makefiles for this purpose and whether they have already settled on alternatives. Configuration management tools like Nix, Ansible, or even container-based approaches (Docker, Devcontainers) address similar pain points; understand their switching costs and what advantages they offer that users might value more than simplicity.

Second, verify whether the tool's simplicity is actually an advantage or a weakness. Some developers may avoid it precisely because it requires manual package-manager knowledge and offers no semantic understanding of dependencies, conflicts, or transitive requirements.

Third, assess the long-term moat. A Makefile approach has little defensibility—anyone can write one. The value lies entirely in the specific template and community contributions. Check whether a GitHub community is forming around shared .mk files and whether tooling could automate the generation of these files to reduce friction further.

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