Every few years someone tries to reinvent make, and they usually end up with some unholy mess that complicates build systems or causes maintenance nightmares, a

Every few years someone tries to reinvent make, and they usually end up with some unholy mess that complicates build systems or causes maintenance nightmares, and is never quite as good. It turns out that make's syntax is actually quite simple and appropriate if you take a day or so to learn it properly. It's such a fantastic tool that if its syntax was really that problematic, someone would have created a new syntax front-end to GNU make by now. The fact that they haven't speaks volumes: by the time you learn enough to be able to do it, you realise you can't really come up with anything better.