If you want to ensure that the REPL is always running, you would probably like to set up the REPL as a launchctl service. How to set it up? First, you need to copy the example .plist file from the root of the project to the target directory: /Library/LaunchDaemons. The next step is to modify the target .plist and set up the correct environment variables. That's all. Now you can run the make command in the project root directory.
This repository does not have installation instructions for Linux, but you can easily find documentation for setting up a new service with systemctl for use by systemd.