Act vs GNU Make

act is an open-source command-line tool that runs GitHub Actions workflows locally using Docker containers. It reads workflow files from .github/workflows/ and executes them with environment variables and filesystem configurations matching GitHub's hosted runners. The tool enables fast local feedback on workflow changes without requiring commits and pushes to a remote repository.

GNU Make is a developer-utilities tool that build automation tool that uses makefiles to define dependency-based build rules and tasks. It is open source software.