Make does what it does surprisingly well: It runs commands on files based on a description of dependencies. There is no shortage of would-be successors of make,

Make does what it does surprisingly well: It runs commands on files based on a description of dependencies. There is no shortage of would-be successors of make, but so far none of them has succeeded, which supports the hypothesis that "make" has hit a sweet spot. There is one alternative to make which I think is worth mentioning, because of its simplicity, brilliance, and excellent support for correctness: it is redo, as in Apenwarrs redo: https://redo.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://redo.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ And redo works with autotools!