[ulrikrasmussen]

Sorry if I am a bit frank, but I simply do not believe you when you say you have users who prefer the "hybrid DAG mixed with stages". That's a bit like Microsoft saying that there are users who enjoy the 255 character path limit. My use case isn't an "improved DAG model", it is a DAG model without the pointless restrictions introduced by broken legacy.

In the DAG model (which really is just the model implemented by every sane build tool ever made), stages give you no extra expressive power, they only add arbitrary restrictions to that model and aren't useful at all.