The name make system is used in this documentation to refer to one of the various systems used to construct a Makefile from another source file. These systems are intend to make the creation and maintenance of Makefiles simpler.
The important thing to understand about make systems is that the source of a software project which uses one of these systems is delivered without a Makefile. This means that some extra command(s) need to be performed before gmake can be run the first time.
For people unused to building free software, this represents extra complexity right at the time when they are least equipped to handle it. Maketool tries to soften this impact by:
automatically detecting which (if any) make system is used by the software project;
providing (in the Build menu) a command to update the Makefile, and various other commands related to the make system;
automatically updating the Makefile every time a target is built (if the Build Makefile from Imakefile or Makefile.in checkbox is on).
Maketool knows about all the popular make systems used with free software today: