[tomlu]

I've worked on two build systems (and used many more). The conclusion I have arrived at is you don't want a declarative-only system (like Ant). They can be convenient but as your needs grow more complex they start becoming a hindrance.

Instead, you want general purpose language that builds the build dag using the build system as a library. This gets you control and customisability for free, and you can still get reuse through code libraries.