I'm a big fan of the "backwards" build system Make. It's very concise, portable enough, and not language-specific. I use it on literally 100% of my projects to hold small scripts. Example: "setup Python virtualenv" or "do a fast feedback loop with Lint" or "do a slower high quality feedback loop with Pylint and the full test suite".

I'm thrilled people are developing other options, building a project "forwards".

FYI "strace" on Linux makes it doable to trace build dependencies. Alas it doesn't work on macOS, and I haven't found an easy equivalent.