This is actually a shell script in disguise. If this is all you do with make, I ...

This is actually a shell script in disguise. If this is all you do with make, I suggest you make this into a shell script:

  <Makefile sed -E 's/.*:$//; s/\(|\)//g; s/^updatedeps:.*/mkdir -p $TMPDIR/' > update-deps.sh
  BASEDIR=$PWD sh ./update-deps.sh

Make is for generating output from interdependent input. It can be used for minifying your JS, or compiling your CoffeeScript in to js, or your sass (but that is handled mostly by respective compilers, tho I prefer running the compiler myself) (also, I don't use coffeescript or sass, so IDK if I'm mistaken).