[Awtem]

If it takes you too long, maybe you're doing it wrong then? Are you sure you are solving a real problem with it?

I don't mean to insult you, so please don't take this the wrong way... The Point I want to make is this: Is it even a reasonable project to build a build system that does everything for everybody? It would appear -- from plenty of evidence around in most open-source projects -- that mostly each of them had to work around at least a couple of restrictions in their off-the-shelf build-system, and I haven't seen a reasonable sized project that got away without additional scripting.

So if the developer already has the need for custom scripting, why not take python? And if it Takes less Time+LOC to roll your own project-customized build-system than it would take you to integrate a "general-purpose" build-system... There is a very strong case for a small python script like the one presented here.