I think the basic idea of make is brilliant and still very useful. Compare time stamps of files and if there is a file A that is newer than file B and that is n

I think the basic idea of make is brilliant and still very useful. Compare time stamps of files and if there is a file A that is newer than file B and that is needed to make file B, then make B again, with the provided command. The problem is trying to put any more functionality into it than that. Everything more complex than this basic functionality should be instead implemented in a script that gets called by make to rebuild the given file.