General problem: do they support build variants in multiple output dirs? For example, I believe this is hard/impossible with the redo model, and I don't like tons of tiny shell scripts.
redo|http://jdebp.eu./FGA/introduction-to-redo.html -- redo is a package originally designed by Daniel J. Bernstein in 2003. Its purpose is to provide a build system for software packages that does incremental builds. No parallel builds.
danfuzz/blur|https://github.com/danfuzz/blur -- Blur is a very small and simple target-driven (top-down) build system, with (practically speaking) no dependencies: It is written entirely as a small handful of Bash scripts, totaling about 1,200 lines.
setup.shl|https://github.com/lih/setup - A simple Bash library for setting up a directory structure using Makefile-like definitions
akkartik/basic-build|https://www.reddit.com/r/tinycode/comments/6md2l8/make_gmake_cmake_ninja_minimal_build_system_in_50/ -- A minimal build system using Bourne sh. I believe one person pointed out the fact that the author has to topologically sort the definitions themselves.
I also ranted a bit in this comment thread|https://lobste.rs/s/azldgm/oil_comments_about_shell_awk_make about the overlap between Make and shell. And what I want from a build tool (build variants to support performance, security, correctness, etc.)