Surprised no-one has mentioned redo[0]. I much prefer it to `make` for personal projects these days.
[0] https://github.com/apenwarr/redo
In Qake: GNU Make-based build system with a different approachapenwarr
redo
Python2010–2023
apenwarr / redo
redo
Smaller, easier, more powerful, and more reliable than make. An implementation of djb's redo.
33Distinct people
42Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Smaller, easier, more powerful, and more reliable than make. An implementation of djb's redo.
GitHub
Where it is used
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What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:04:58 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year42 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2010-12-14 12:59:14 UTC to 2023-04-25 13:22:40 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
redo - a recursive build system
Smaller, easier, more powerful, and more reliable than make.
This is an implementation of Daniel J. Bernstein's redo
build system. He never released his
version, so other people have implemented different variants based on his
published specification.
This version, sometimes called apenwarr/redo, is probably the most advanced
one, including parallel builds, improved logging, extensive automated tests,
and helpful debugging features.
To build and test redo, run:
./do -j10 test
To install it, run something like this:
DESTDIR= PREFIX=/usr/local ./do -j10 install
View the documentation via readthedocs.org
Visit the source code on github
Discussions and support via the
mailing list (archives).
You can subscribe by sending any email message to
redo-list+subscribe@googlegroups.com (note the plus sign). You can
send questions or feedback (with or without subscribing) by sending
messages to redo-list@googlegroups.com.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
7 sourcesRelated reading: https://github.com/apenwarr/redo
In The Tup Build Systemredo is pretty cool, but I ran into trouble with apenwarr's implementation (https://github.com/apenwarr/redo, see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/redo-list/GL5z8eEqT90/tk_vLZ...) with OS X Mavericks. I have no experience with the alternative implementation at https://github.com/gyepisam/redux, since it came out after I reimplemented the build system in question with CMake.
In general, I found CMake quite useable for my needs, and quite clean. It also required less build system code than redo. CMake fits quite nicely into a (C or C++) project which consists of many binaries and libraries which can depend on each other.
In Build Tools – Make, no moreI think the big difference between redo and make is that make requires knowledge of dependencies up front, and this is sometimes tricky to get right.
"as you can see in default.o.do, you can declare a dependency after building the program. In C, you get your best dependency information by trying to actually build, since that's how you find out which headers you need. redo is based on the following simple insight: you don't actually care what the dependencies are before you build the target; if the target doesn't exist, you obviously need to build it. Then, the build script itself can provide the dependency information however it wants; unlike in make, you don't need a special dependency syntax at all. You can even declare some of your dependencies after building, which makes C-style autodependencies much simpler."
https://github.com/apenw
Read the rest
apenwarr also did an implementation of redo.
https://github.com/apenwarr/redo
It might be interesting to see if the two of you interpreted DJB's documentation in the same ways.
In Boring Systems Build Badass BusinessesYou should check out djb's redo [1], specifically the implementation by apenwarr [2]. It's close to the separation of concerns you're looking for: programs written in your language of choice enumerate the dependency graph, an external tool collects them and executes its way through the dependency graph towards your targets.
I agree with you that Make's pattern matching facilities are ugly and could be improved upon. I tried something of the sort [3] with redo, and it worked well, but felt too alien.
From what I've seen at big companies with huge builds, the "dependency graph itself changed, now what do we rebuild" problem is the killer problem. I bet you've seen instances of that at Google.
[1] http://cr.yp.to/redo.html
[2] https://github.com/apenwarr/redo
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7464047
In Why Use Make? (2013)redo[1] is almost never mentioned in these discussions. Has anyone tried it in anything significant? It looks good and is a djb design.
[1] https://github.com/apenwarr/redo
In The Ultimate Frontend Build tool: make