Thanks for the comprehensive list of alternatives, there's some that I wasn't even aware of ;-) A few observations: - Bake has been used across platforms for l

Thanks for the comprehensive list of alternatives, there's some that I wasn't even aware of ;-) A few observations: - Bake has been used across platforms for large projects and its declarative approach held up pretty well. Note that being declarative does not mean a configuration cannot contain conditional attributes (which bake supports). You need conditionals for things to work properly on different platforms, like documented here: https://github.com/SanderMertens/bake#can-i-link-with-non-bake-libraries https://github.com/SanderMertens/bake#can-i-link-with-non-ba... - I share the frustration, but I do not share your conclusion. Bake takes a refreshing approach to package management in that it doesn't try to do too much, which is perhaps what turned you off in other projects. It doesn't even compete with package managers like brew or vcpkg (which is not a build system, you might want to correct that). I would go into more detail, but then again I've already done so in a few comments, and the README is pretty comprehensive in explaining how it works. - I did not invent my own syntax, the configuration is written plain JSON. Whether this was a good or bad decision we'll have to see, the jury is still out on that. NPM seems to do alright though. So far, the people that have actually used bake have been unanimously positive. I can confidently state that the learning curve of bake is much lower than a tool like CMake or premake (which I like), let alone make or autotools. Based on the feedback of Bake's users I decided to spin off the project, as I figured others could benefit from it too. So yes, it is yet another tool, but IMHO there's little harm in that.