‪Autoconf and make‬

Obsolete shit forced upon us by our ancestors, amIrite?
Why does every peace of crap C program I compile in Linux have to check for a Fortran 95 compiler? There's thousands of LOC in the final makefile doing shit like working around obscure bugs in versions of csh from the 80's.

I know there must be better shit out there. Auto-dependencies, platform independance, clean syntax, intelligible error messages.

Moar!
- Does anyone have any experience with SCons, JAM, etc.?

- Are there any features you wish for that you haven't seen in any build tool? (Not even your apparently loved ghc --make?)