Right, "mistake" may have been a bit too harsh, but I regularly work with systems written in multiple languages and the amount of necessary hackery (aka "duct t

Right, "mistake" may have been a bit too harsh, but I regularly work with systems written in multiple languages and the amount of necessary hackery (aka "duct tape") is absolutely crazy. The abysmal quality of all the mainstream build systems is just one of my pet peeves. (Incidentally, mainstream also includes "make". It's horrific, though it did get some basic things right.) I am pretty convinced that "we" (as an industry) already actually know 95% of what the 'problem space' of a build system is, but everybody just wants to greenfield and try to do their own. Why? Because it's more fun! There's no actual real rationale for reinventing everything every few years. I guess it comes about from a lack of attention to history and a lack of attention to the state of the art, e.g. Shake in Haskell-land. Sorry to be so negative. I'm sure that Cargo at least works really well according to the 80-20 rule :).