By 'platform' I meant programming language and execution environment (JVM/Ruby/Python), not OS.

I'm fond of not having the number of build systems I'm responsible for maintaining grow in step with the number of programming languages I use in a project.

All build systems I've come across are quite happy to build code in other languages - just like make. The reason I'd recommend the dominant system in each ecosystem is, well, that: It's dominant, thus likely to be better supported for the issue you're likely to face.

I've gone back and re-read your comments in this post and tried to find something concrete in them. You use strong, imperative language, yet I have no idea what you are recommending.

Which one is better depends on the platform you're on.

We are not stuck on any particular platform, we target numerous platforms new and old. Using make, the target may determine which of those wonderful tools in our ever changing (improving, failing and obsoleting) ecosystem does the actual build.

    build:
	xcodebuild -target MyApp -configuration Release clean
	xcodebuild -target MyApp-universal -configuration Release-universal clean

But all I need to do is type make