For my projects I did a make system that uses gmake meta programming to easily define rules for most cases, here you have to includes a template make file that

For my projects I did a make system that uses gmake meta programming to easily define rules for most cases, here you have to includes a template make file that expands the target definitions into make rules. http://mosermichael.github.io/cstuff/all/projects/2011/06/17/make-system.html http://mosermichael.github.io/cstuff/all/projects/2011/06/17... The catch is of course most cases ; other stuff is still possible to do , but things become hacky. Another downside is cross compilation, my system does not do this effectively (though it works for Linux i686, x86_64 and Cygwin - many surprises between these setups !). Most build systems I know don't support cross compilation - except for automake, the terrible. If you do debian packages then you are strongly encouraged to use automake - because of cross compilation.