But the problem is that there were no proper build systems to use, not that they weren’t familiar with them. Gmake, cmake, scons, waf, whatever - non of them p

But the problem is that there were no proper build systems to use, not that they weren’t familiar with them. Gmake, cmake, scons, waf, whatever - non of them provide hermetic deterministic builds, track compiler versions properly, etc. The only build system I had used which could, with crazy effort, provide some of those features, is iirc ClearCase (or whatever it used for version control and management), and it was painful in every way and still didn’t enforce it - just had enough to allow you to do it with great effort (which gmake/cmake don’t even do)