[bediger4000]

Why have all the previous Make alternatives failed to get traction?

I mean, ant, gradle, maven, imake, there's probably others... all have had their moment as the "It Girl" of builds, and then seemed to wither away. What's up with that?

[icedchai]

Maven is widely used with Java projects. It was never a general purpose make alternative.

[duped]

CMake + ninja is more popular in new projects ime due to the sheer speed improvement over make.