Almost every new project I download starts with a sad, manual, and demoralizing installation of a bunch of third-party stuff that you have to google to find out what's missing. And it's not educational at all, because in a few years all these tools will now be obsolete.
(The best project I ever encountered was the Stripe CTF, which almost always used just one command to install a complete working copy of everything you needed and didn't have. I'm still impressed with that.)
For instance, redux [https://github.com/gyepisam/redux] is written in Go (not compiled for binary distribution, but I could add that), is cross platform, supports any mix of languages and tasks, is very easy to learn.
It uses shell scripts to create targets so everything is scriptable. Stuff like recognizing standard folder hierarchies and auto-discovery can be added with small scripts or tools. It can be as simple as you want or as complex as you need.
Such a tool should be: - Zero (or few) dependencies. Likely written in plain C (or C++, D, Rust) and compiled to distribute in binary form. - Cross-platform - Support any mix of project languages and build tasks. - Recognizes standard folder hierarchies for popular projects. - Easy enough to learn. Not overly verbose (looking at you, XML). Similar to Make if possible.
Examples of the auto-discovery: It can find "src", "inc", and "lib" directories then look inside and see .h files then make some educated guesses to build the dependency tree of header and source files (even with mix of C and C++). Or it could see a Rails app and figure out to invoke the right Rake commands, perhaps checking for the presence of an asset pipeline etc. Or a Node.js project. It could check for GIT or SVN and make sure any sub-modules have been checked out.