Make is fine, but I think we have better tools nowadays to do the same things.
Even though it may not have been originally intended as such, I've found Fabric http://docs.fabfile.org/en/1.13/tutorial.html to be far far more powerful and intuitive as a means of creating CLI's (that you can easily parametrize and test) around common tasks such as building software.
Even though it may not have been originally intended as such, I've found Fabric http://docs.fabfile.org/en/1.13/tutorial.html to be far far more powerful and intuitive as a means of creating CLI's (that you can easily parametrize and test) around common tasks such as building software.