You might find the blog post http://skalrant.blogspot.com/2013/05/build-systems.html http://skalrant.blogspot.com/2013/05/build-systems.html interesting. It arg

You might find the blog post http://skalrant.blogspot.com/2013/05/build-systems.html http://skalrant.blogspot.com/2013/05/build-systems.html interesting. It argues that a declarative style is not suitable for many software development projects. Coming from the author who is also the author of an ML like language it makes for a good read. Declarative is surely elegant, but not always easy to work with under specific and not uncommon situations. Note, however, it touches on an orthogonal aspect of build systems. I think Repobuild's main thrust is in standardizing and assisting modularization whereas the post linked in this comment has a different focus, it argues for a non-declarative, fixed-point based style.