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> 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.

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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/

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