KeybukMake (for lack of a better term) is an idea that ScottJamesRemnant and MartinPitt are working on.  Basically it's a replacement for autoconf, automake, libtool, etc. that fixes much that is wrong with those systems.

Possible Features:

 * simple, clean, consistent syntax
 * rules file per-directory
 * support both recursive and non-recursive builds
 * support parallel builds
 * may not rely on auto-generated output
 * "All the world must be Linux by now" design, we don't need to support 1920s-era AIX :-)

Ways of doing it (pick one):

 * configure-like program to write Makefiles
 * make-like program to read rules and build program
 * magic Makefile rules (cdbs-like?)

Existing systems which do not look crackful right from the start:

 * [[http://boost.org/boost-build2/|bjam]]
 * [[http://www.dscpl.com.au/projects/makeit/|makeit]]
 * [[http://www.scons.org/|scons]] (seems to be powerful, used by KDE, but rules are written in Python code, so they aren't very readable)
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