They had tons of makefiles, so moving to something make-like was desirable. I personally think that GNU make has a ton of bells and whistles, so it may be very

They had tons of makefiles, so moving to something make-like was desirable. I personally think that GNU make has a ton of bells and whistles, so it may be very difficult to emulate it with any accuracy; then again, they also know which features of GNU make are important to their project. I might have bitten the bullet and chosen something like SCons to reach a Python base, and I have spent time rewriting (one or two) makefiles as SConstructs without a problem. But I have also seen huge projects with makefile madness, and I can certainly understand anyone's decision to want to keep makefiles untouched. Emulating make, while leaving room for improvements, isn't such a bad decision.