[TheDong]

Well technically simple to do, that misses the point.

That is neither ubiquitous, nor (as a result), trivial for a newcomer to understand.

If I clone a repo and see a makefile, I know what to do.

If I clone a repo and see './hack.sh' or './runme' or './do' or whatever you chose to call it, I have no clue whether I should invoke it or not.

There are few alternatives to make that have the same level of mindshare, and thus the same ease of use for a given newcomer to grok what to do.

Most alternatives are language specific (e.g. "rake" in rails did a good job of building programmer expectations that you use 'rake ...' to do various common tasks).

[aidenn0]

If you name it "configure" then most people will run it; you can put the instructions there.