[lmm]

The reason people do this is the C toolchain is terrible, especially on linux. Want to depend on a specific version of a library? Whoops, no, you can't do that. Want to extend make? Well, you either do it in make or in shell, neither of which are nice languages. Want to compile and link your code once? Good luck fighting libtool. Want a package with dependencies? You'll have to choose whether to work on debian or on not-debian. And actually the debian maintainers are going to move all your files around anyway, because the FHS committee certainly knew better than you where your program's files should go.

It's bad enough I start to wish everyone would just use the JVM, where you have maven. Truly reproducible builds, depend on whatever range of library versions you work with (and it's no problem if two programs want to use different versions), a structured and testable plugin system for extending the build system, and you can use it to build any language (there are some benighted fools who write their own tools like SBT, but they will at least stay compatible so can usually be safely ignored).