I've also written my own alternative to make called Rabs (https://github.com/wrapl/rabs https://github.com/wrapl/rabs) which uses an imperative language to spec

I've also written my own alternative to make called Rabs (https://github.com/wrapl/rabs https://github.com/wrapl/rabs) which uses an imperative language to specify the dependency graph as well as the build instructions. It's designed for really fast incremental builds.