> make has been around long enough that there are several other tools that know how to work with it.
I'd prefer an improved from-scratch 2nd-generation tool instead of using one that simply wraps around a complicated 1st-gen one that I'd rather not touch.
Make has more warts than just the tab characters. Lots of obscurely-named variables, for starters.
You might want to check out tup. It uses the dependency tree in a fundamentally different way from make, in order to improve build times. http://gittup.org/tup/
> [complicated tool ...] Lots of obscurely-named variables, for starters.
Are you talking about make or just GNU make? The $< $* $$@ stuff comes from gmake. Make itself is pretty simple. Here's a good tutorial: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/pmake/
I'd prefer an improved from-scratch 2nd-generation tool instead of using one that simply wraps around a complicated 1st-gen one that I'd rather not touch.
Make has more warts than just the tab characters. Lots of obscurely-named variables, for starters.