What surprises me is that nobody seems to take the approach of fixing make, as if it is somehow beyond redemption. With a little effort you could address some of the things that people most dislike about make (tabs-vs-spaces, multiple outputs per target). With a little more effort you can have up-to-date checks that don't rely solely on timestamps.

That's the direction we've taken with ElectricAccelerator ( http://www.electric-cloud.com/products/electricaccelerator-d...) -- fix make, rather than cooking up Y.A.M.R. It hasn't (yet) fixed all of the issues with make, but it's hit some of the biggest.

(disclaimer: I'm the architect of ElectricAccelerator)