Part 6: A Makefile for the project

In Part 5: Connect frontend and backend we ran the backend and frontend by hand. Each one ran in its own terminal with its own command. We install dependencies and run the tests the same way, one folder at a time.

That's a lot of commands to remember and retype. We collect them into a Makefile at the repo root, so one short command runs each. We keep extending this file in every part that follows.

The commands so far

By hand, running and testing the project looks like this:

• install: cd backend && uv sync and cd frontend && npm install
• backend: cd backend && uv run uvicorn app.main:app --reload --port 8000
• frontend: cd frontend && npm run dev
• tests: cd backend && uv run pytest and cd frontend && npm test

Create the Makefile

Ask the assistant:

Add a Makefile at the repo root with three targets: install (install backend and
frontend dependencies), dev (run the backend and frontend together), and test
(run both test suites). We'll add more targets in later steps.

The first version wraps exactly those commands:

.PHONY: install dev test

install:
    cd backend && uv sync
    cd frontend && npm install

dev:
    @trap 'kill 0' EXIT; \
    (cd backend && uv run uvicorn app.main:app --reload --port 8000) & \
    (cd frontend && npm run dev) & \
    wait

test:
    cd backend && uv run pytest
    cd frontend && npm test

The dev target runs both servers together, which a single command couldn't do before. The trap 'kill 0' EXIT line stops both when you press Ctrl-C, and wait holds the target open while they run.

From now on the project has three short commands:

make install   # set up both sides
make dev       # run the backend and frontend together
make test      # run both test suites

We give the app a real database next in Part 7: Real persistence with SQLite, and we add a Makefile target for its tests there.