[zwp]

You might like "Recursive Make Considered Harmful", Miller.

http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf

Although I suspect the main complaint (slow, due to checking directories where nothing has changed) has mostly been swept under the rug by increased CPU speeds some of the other items (managing dependencies, ordering, ...) are still worth considering today.

[jhasse]

Tup solves this: http://gittup.org/tup/