FreeBSD Porter's Handbook
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# 12.8 Do Things Rationally

The `Makefile` should do things simply and reasonably. If you can make it a couple of lines shorter or more readable, then do so. Examples include using a make `.if` construct instead of a shell `if` construct, not redefining `do-extract` if you can redefine `EXTRACT*` instead, and using `GNU_CONFIGURE` instead of `CONFIGURE_ARGS += --prefix=${PREFIX}`.

If you find yourself having to write a lot of new code to try to do something, please go back and review `bsd.port.mk` to see if it contains an existing implementation of what you are trying to do. While hard to read, there are a great many seemingly-hard problems for which `bsd.port.mk` already provides a shorthand solution.

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