Let's shed some light on spectacular features and design decisions behind some of the less popular general-purpose build systems. Some of them are employed in well-known successful companies, while others are mainly of academic interest. For example, did you know that some build systems can check the correctness of build files refactoring?
Beware: this material may encourage you to extend the functionality of your build system, completely replace CMake, Make, Gradle, or another build system for your project, and, in severe cases, write your own build system from scratch. As part of dealing with "side effects", I'll mention the main drawbacks and problems in using the covered build systems.
On the other hand, I will show how one could use some of the highlighted ideas in already existing projects, without drastic changes.