No you shouldn't. I know make inside and out, a result of being stubborn and lazy, and I am positive I can build a better replacement for it in a matter of days

No you shouldn't. I know make inside and out, a result of being stubborn and lazy, and I am positive I can build a better replacement for it in a matter of days. Something like, but more general than, Rake. The way Make works is very complex with lot of implicit rules, special exceptions, etc. Debugging Makefile is a chore. If you are bent to use it, two pieces of advice: there is a handy debug flag that will tell you everything make is doing, and do disable all the implicit rules.