NAnt VS SCons

NAnt was quite a popular build tool used by projects of all sizes targeting .NET Framework on Windows. I have written many complex build systems using NAnt in the past. But XML based DSL was quite clunky to use and maintain. Besides, it was always a daunting task to explain to a new dev on the team. With .NET Core/.NET becoming a cross-platform framework, CAKE and FAKE gained a lot of adoption providing a C# and... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago

I've been working on NAnt2 - a fork of the awesome NAnt project. Since it might look both projects have stalled, it's not true for NAnt2 - ideas and things to do still pop up thus there are 101 issues currently on its board, besides bringing it to year 2021. Source: almost 3 years ago

The most comprehensive make alternative in python I've seen is Scons (https://scons.org/) It would be worth to see how they tackles some of the challenges you're looking into. Blurb from the website: SCons is an Open Source software construction tool. Think of SCons as an improved, cross-platform substitute for the classic Make utility with integrated functionality similar to autoconf/automake and compiler caches... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago

Https://scons.org/ It has cache facility to speed up re-builds. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago

SCons never got popular enough to escape the niches it grew up in. Source: 10 months ago

I literally do almost this exact thing with the game im working on. Situation is: im the programmer, working with an artist who cant code (and im not going to make them edit json on an ipad lmao) so I have a google drive spreadsheet where they put metadata for the items they make. I have a script that uses rclone to copy this down as a csv, along with the image assets. Then I wrote a python extension for scons... Source: about 1 year ago

It's a build tool, like cmake. https://scons.org/ you have to install it. Source: about 1 year ago