I agree with Greg here. In fact even if it was well done, it is
declaring something that wasn't really a problem, to be a problem, to
insert itself as the solution, but I think it's just extra stuff and
steps that ultimately obfuscates and creates yet more dependencies.
That's a really bold claim. You may not like the solution (I don't tend to comment on it because unlike some here, I recognize that build systems are a Hard Problem and I don't know how to make a better solution), but that doesn't mean it isn't solving real problems.
But I'll bite. There was the claim by Larry McVoy that "Writing Makefiles isn't that hard".
Please show these beautiful makefiles for a non-toy non-trivial product (say, something like gcc or llvm), which make it easy to change platforms, underlying compilers, works well with modern multicore processors, gets the dependencies right (one should never have to type "make clean" to get a build working correctly), etc. and doesn't require blindly running some 20K line shell script like "configure" to set it up.