Q:

why to build large projects through make files rather than visual studio build?

I was studying about the build through make files and was wondering we can also add multiple projects in visual studio then why we still prefer using build through make files....
Have been searching about it but was not able to find some clear answer.
Some things that I found were that using makefiles we can allocate the compiler for every module etc
If you know it Please tell me why shouldn't we use visual studio to build large projects rather than through make files???
Thank you

A:

My team uses makefiles to guide automated builds.  Since most of our software is set to automatically build after 180 seconds of quiet (after the last check-in), the automated build agent uses the makefile to build it.  Other software that is not under automated builds (usually at an earlier stage of development and under control of a single engineer) can safely be built from within Visual Studio.  But in a large team, that condition usually changes as the software matures, and we convert to automated builds.
This is a high-performance form of continuous integration.
In our case, it has less to do with the size of the project and more to do with the size of the team and the maturity of the project.  One-engineer prototypes get built in VS; multi-engineer projects and mature software are under automation.

