I should note that in general, decomposing things into multiple shell utilities is something I'm a huge proponent of, and assuming redo does it well that's real

I should note that in general, decomposing things into multiple shell utilities is something I'm a huge proponent of, and assuming redo does it well that's really cool! That said, I don't think "depending on system headers" is somewhere make is lacking. The -M argument to gcc or clang gives you a well formatted Makefile which includes system headers. You have to explicitly ask they be excluded (-MM) if that's what you want (which it was often enough for the option to be added, it seems).