Make is a file-based dependency tree that only defaults to a specific shell. If you really want to go crazy, you could actually change it to anything that can be invoked with "<executable> <file>", such as python, and use that language instead.

As a really crude example:

  SHELL := python
  .ONESHELL:

  out.csv:
      import csv
      with open("$@", "w") as f:
          writer = csv.writer(f)
          writer.writerow(["header1", "header2"])

and so:

  $ make
  import csv
  with open("out.csv", "w") as f:
      writer = csv.writer(f)
      writer.writerow(["header1", "header2"])
  $ cat out.csv 
  header1,header2

I get that this doesn't exactly solve your "cross-platform work" gripe, but my point is that a lot of what people perceive as make providing isn't actually make in the first place.