[acdha]

The “restrict yourself to Linux” bit seems very odd to me: make is one of the most portable build tools in existence. Even 20 years ago it was common to have makefiles which worked on a dozen Unix variants (not just *BSD & Linux), Windows, OS/2, VMS, BeOS, etc. and it’s gotten easier over time rather than harder.

Were you perhaps referring to platform-specific tools called by a Makefile?