[ufmace]

That's what I dropped in to say. I've used most of them, and I think Rake is my favorite.

Pretty much all of the others are shell command runners with a couple of extra bits bolted on. Well and good most of the time, but it's another language to learn, and you're mostly SOL if it doesn't support something you want to do nicely.

With Rake, you get the same basic ability to do pre-set shell commands as the others, a single one or a sequence. But you also have the full power of Ruby, a full-fledged programming language, if you want to do anything more complex.