[eckzow]

For Unix-only and smaller projects another great option is fabricate.py

[CmdrKrool]

Another vote for Fabricate; here's a comment of mine from a while back explaining in detail why I prefer it (or Tup) to Make.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4190804

I use it on Windows too with an strace replacement I wrote which isn't online but if anyone's interested then just ask.

[Game_Ender]

Thanks for the tip on fabricate, it appears to be just the tool I was looking for. A light weight dependency based "build" system in python that is not focused on distutils or making python packages. We shall see how well it works for data processing.

[queensnake]

'Drake' for that use was on here too, not too long ago. http://blog.factual.com/introducing-drake-a-kind-of-make-for...