I've been using make for front-end builds for a while. two tools I've been finding to be indisposable are jq and mustache templates. I made a php based mustache

I've been using make for front-end builds for a while. two tools I've been finding to be indisposable are jq and mustache templates. I made a php based mustache/cli implementation here: https://gist.github.com/Breton/7556390 https://gist.github.com/Breton/7556390 This enables you to put a lot of your configuration in a json file, such as actual lists of files (which make is actually terrible at), have a decent way of getting json data out into make processes, and build files templated out of that json configuration, such as ssi files that set whether to load built JS or seperate script tags (also generated out of the same json config). SO you get the declarative stuff in the declarative JSON format, and the stuff that make is good at: incremental builds, stays in make.