Mandelbrot set renderer written in pure [BSD] Makefiles

Name: Mandelbrot set renderer written in pure [BSD] Makefiles
Availability: InStock
Author: b-aaz

by b-aaz·Jul 7, 2026·3 points·0 comments

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AI Analysis

●●●●GemWizardryBig BrainRabbit Hole

Manual floating-point arithmetic inside Make macros renders fractals without shell calls or binaries.

Strengths

•Implements custom floating-point arithmetic using only Make macro expansion logic.
•Proves computational universality of BSD Make with a visually verifiable output.
•Zero external dependencies or shell escapes despite Make lacking native math.

Weaknesses

•Rendering times are absurdly slow, taking days for medium-resolution images.
•Visual artifacts like striping appear due to sketchy floating-point implementation edges.

Post Description

No calls to shell, no external binaries executed, just pure [BSD] Makefiles rendering my favorite fractal.

bmake (AKA BSD make) is the implementation of make(1) used by BSD operating systems. It does not support basic arithmetic, it doesn't have infinite loops, no floating point support, but I forced it to render a fractal anyways :) . To use BSD make on Linux, search your package manager for "bmake", install it, and run `bmake` inside the cloned repo instead of `make`.

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