diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 1396d92e31335..c0ddf04582c4b 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1,55 +1,30 @@
 # simple makefile to simplify repetitive build env management tasks under posix
 
-# caution: testing won't work on windows, see README
-
 PYTHON ?= python
-CYTHON ?= cython
-PYTEST ?= pytest
 
-# skip doctests on 32bit python
-BITS := $(shell python -c 'import struct; print(8 * struct.calcsize("P"))')
+all:
+	@echo "Please use 'make <target>' where <target> is one of"
+	@echo "  dev                  build scikit-learn with Meson"
+	@echo "  clean                clean scikit-learn Meson build. Very rarely needed,"
+	@echo "                       one use case is when switching back to setuptools"
+	@echo "  dev-setuptools       build scikit-learn with setuptools (deprecated)"
+	@echo "  clean-setuptools     clean scikit-learn setuptools build (deprecated)"
 
-all: clean inplace test
+.PHONY: all
 
-clean:
-	$(PYTHON) setup.py clean
-	rm -rf dist
-
-in: inplace # just a shortcut
-inplace:
-	$(PYTHON) setup.py build_ext -i
+dev: dev-meson
 
 dev-meson:
 	pip install --verbose --no-build-isolation --editable . --check-build-dependencies --config-settings editable-verbose=true
 
+clean: clean-meson
+
 clean-meson:
 	pip uninstall -y scikit-learn
 
-test-code: in
-	$(PYTEST) --showlocals -v sklearn --durations=20
-test-sphinxext:
-	$(PYTEST) --showlocals -v doc/sphinxext/
-test-doc:
-ifeq ($(BITS),64)
-	$(PYTEST) $(shell find doc -name '*.rst' | sort)
-endif
-test-code-parallel: in
-	$(PYTEST) -n auto --showlocals -v sklearn --durations=20
-
-test-coverage:
-	rm -rf coverage .coverage
-	$(PYTEST) sklearn --showlocals -v --cov=sklearn --cov-report=html:coverage
-test-coverage-parallel:
-	rm -rf coverage .coverage .coverage.*
-	$(PYTEST) sklearn -n auto --showlocals -v --cov=sklearn --cov-report=html:coverage
-
-test: test-code test-sphinxext test-doc
-
-cython:
-	python setup.py build_src
-
-doc: inplace
-	$(MAKE) -C doc html
-
-doc-noplot: inplace
-	$(MAKE) -C doc html-noplot
+dev-setuptools:
+	$(PYTHON) setup.py build_ext -i
+
+clean-setuptools:
+	$(PYTHON) setup.py clean
+	rm -rf dist
diff --git a/build_tools/azure/test_docs.sh b/build_tools/azure/test_docs.sh
index 1258ecf69f080..48ad2763edb36 100755
--- a/build_tools/azure/test_docs.sh
+++ b/build_tools/azure/test_docs.sh
@@ -1,11 +1,10 @@
 #!/bin/bash
 
-set -e
+set -ex
 
-if [[ "$DISTRIB" =~ ^conda.* ]]; then
-    source activate $VIRTUALENV
-elif [[ "$DISTRIB" == "ubuntu" || "$DISTRIB" == "pip-free-threaded" ]]; then
-    source $VIRTUALENV/bin/activate
-fi
+source build_tools/shared.sh
+activate_environment
 
-make test-doc
+# XXX: for some unknown reason python -m pytest fails here in the CI, can't
+# reproduce locally and not worth spending time on this
+pytest $(find doc -name '*.rst' | sort)
diff --git a/doc/developers/contributing.rst b/doc/developers/contributing.rst
index b931b9f8d091f..afdd5e8271e53 100644
--- a/doc/developers/contributing.rst
+++ b/doc/developers/contributing.rst
@@ -996,7 +996,7 @@ We expect code coverage of new features to be at least around 90%.
   To test code coverage, you need to install the `coverage
   <https://pypi.org/project/coverage/>`_ package in addition to `pytest`.
 
-  1. Run `make test-coverage`. The output lists for each file the line
+  1. Run `pytest --cov sklearn /path/to/tests`. The output lists for each file the line
      numbers that are not tested.
 
   2. Find a low hanging fruit, looking at which lines are not tested,