SCons
make
This is the standard against which all other build systems are currently compared.
GNU Autotools extends GNU Make with a larger library of default build rules, plus extensive dependency checking capability. It knows how to compile software (executables, shared libraries, plus documentation, etc) for a large number of targets, which is something that rapidly becomes tedious when using plain Makefiles.
CMake
When compared to scons, CMake is :
- Faster
- Requires less code for common tasks
- Arguably more stable
- Supports outputting to projects like Code::Blocks, Xcode, etc. which scons does not.
But :
- Uses its own language, reinventing the wheel and not providing access to the extensibility and power of a real language.
- Arguably not as extensible as scons.
- For terminal builds, still requires the use of ‘make’ (which, depending on your point of view, may or may not be a disadvantage) while scons is self-contained, all-in-one.
To sum up, my very subjective opinion is that scons is a better idea, but CMake has a stronger implementation.
Makeit
Jam
qmake
A-A-P
Ant
Maven
Rake
Rant
Makepp
Waf
KConfig
Other comparisons
Reference